Judge Milton Mack

All the stakeholders are in these meetings, right?

We even had the Michigan Hospital Association.

I suggested they be part of the diversion council.

They were kind of curious why they were there.

They didn't think they were part of the issue.

I said, actually, you're a big part of the issue.

If your system isn't working, nothing's working.

With the Diversion Council, we've been developing these statutory changes in 2016 and 18 and 19.

So I've kind of expanded the notion of what diversion is.

So in my view, diversion is a healthy mental health system that keeps people from involving themselves in the criminal justice system at all.

It's a form of diversion, but it's rather expansive.

I mean, the Diversion Council in the beginning was focused on people who are in jail and what could we do for them.

I want to focus on people before they end up in jail.

You think about it, in Michigan, in an average year, between 150,000 and 200,000 people show up in hospital emergency rooms.

On the other hand, mental health courts we have in Michigan, we have a lot.

We have over 200 courts.

that do this sort of work.

But only about 3% of the people who have a mental illness in our state jails are in a treatment court.

The treatment courts are expensive and you can't scale them up.

So if you really want to make a difference, go upstream.