NC crime bill doesn’t do enough to address mental health. These steps will help | Opinion

The tragic recent killing of Iryna Zarutska aboard a light rail train in Charlotte prompted new legislation here in North Carolina that would, in part, put more resources into studying the intersection of mental health and the judicial system.

Whether or not Gov. Josh Stein signs the bill into law, much more work is needed if we truly want to address the connections between mental illness and crime.

I’m a brain science researcher at Duke University, and I urge you to understand the complexity of this problem.

The man accused in the horrific Charlotte killing reportedly has dealt with severe, persistent mental illness. That level of illness is crippling. It leaves sufferers too sick to cope with daily life, and it often exceeds their families’ ability to help. This often leads to homelessness, which only exacerbates the problem.

For this small group of people, we need comprehensive supportive care in a therapeutic environment. This care can take many forms, from group homes to supportive housing with care available around the clock to long-term institutionalization.

This type of comprehensive care has been undermined in our society for many decades. Since the early 1970s, the “deinstitutionalization movement” has led to closure of mental facilities like Dorothea Dix in Raleigh, which closed in 2012.

Without these necessary institutions, jails and prisons — the least therapeutic environments imaginable — have become the largest de facto mental health providers in the country. Jails and prisons hold people for the duration of their sentences, but too often release them into the street — another non-therapeutic environment.

We should instead provide proactive care for people with severe, persistent mental illness, whether or not they have committed a crime.

To prevent future incidents like the horrific scene on the Charlotte train, state leaders should provide more funding for a broad spectrum of mental health services, including Assertive Community Treatment Teams, inpatient hospitals and peer support specialists. State leaders should also fund long-term care for the mentally ill. It is not out of the question to re-open a facility like Dorothea Dix, but solutions such as supportive housing are available now and can be better funded. For those who require incarceration, mandate and fund mental health care in jails and prisons, along with “warm handoffs,” or direct, in-person connecting, to community care upon release as opposed to referring a person to options, which often goes unfulfilled.

Our society has done this before; states like Vermont are doing it now. We have the facilities to do it in North Carolina. And while these services aren’t free, studies have repeatedly shown that supportive housing options cost the same or less than prisons and jails, and the additional reduction in costs to healthcare and other emergency services makes the effort worthwhile.

Not to mention the peace of mind from knowing that a person in mental health crisis is housed in a place that can get them through the crisis safely.

We will all be safer if we choose proactive, rather than reactive, solutions. Now is the time to start.

Nicole Schramm-Sapyta is associate director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. Her views are her own and do not represent the views of Duke University.