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Learn how philanthropy can aid in preventing the overrepresentation of people with mental health conditions in the criminal legal system.
How Funders Can Help Divert People with Mental Health Disabilities from Contact with the Criminal Legal System
by Sarah Katz
June 2024
Marq Mitchell, founder of Chainless Change, which works with Floridians in Broward and Miami-Dade counties who have been negatively impacted by the criminal legal system, had been preparing for a presentation on “disability joy” at the time of our phone interview.
“It is an act of resistance to find joy in our current experiences where people often believe that we’re supposed to always feel sad and be downtrodden, and instead we choose to be creative…The discussion we’re having today is simply about: ‘How do we find joy in a world that oftentimes just does not work for us and seeks to make us less visible as often as possible?’”
Mitchell, who lives at the intersections of several marginalized identities, has come into contact with many systems over the course of his life that some scholars argue operate under “carceral logics”–a punishment mindset: child welfare systems, school systems, mental health care systems, and criminal legal systems, among others. He describes these systems as largely invisibilizing and disempowering.
“Nearly always I felt like my needs weren’t met and my voice wasn’t heard,” he said, “and often found myself being misunderstood and criminalized simply because of my identity and experiences.”
Founding Chainless Change has therefore been, for Mitchell and the systems-impacted people he collaborates with, a way of resisting those impacts.
“We’re … leaning into this concept of collectivism and building a network of folks who are impacted by systems but still finding ways to build power and advocate for the things that we need to live in communities that work for us,” he said. “To, as a collective, be able to create a culture of healing and repair that then helps to prevent other folks from having similar experiences that we have in the future.”
In practice, the team at Chainless Change is connecting with people in institutions–particularly corrections facilities throughout South Florida–and building rapport with them, identifying their unmet needs, administering mutual aid, and supporting them post-release. Their work also involves “challenging local policies and practices that aim to continue to further marginalize us,” he said.
To sustain such efforts requires adequate funding, and philanthropy has a key role to play in providing support. As such, it’s essential for grantmakers to understand people with mental health disabilities as whole people experiencing “human variances,” Mitchell said. “Mental health and the way people respond to poor mental health … doesn’t look the same for everyone and it doesn’t look the same everywhere.”
The Dangers of the Criminal Legal System to People with Mental Health Disabilities
The “criminal legal system” is a broad term that refers to policing, courts, and corrections in the United States, and data show that a significant number of disabled people come into contact with it.
A significant portion of people who come into contact with the juvenile and criminal legal systems have a mental health disability. A quarter of fatal U.S. police shootings are of people with mental illnesses, according to a Washington Post database created in 2020. People with mental health disabilities are also more likely to be incarcerated than those without: while 18% of the general population has a mental illness, 44% of those in jail and 37% of those in prison have a mental illness.
As for youth, 70% in the juvenile legal system have a mental health condition, and they are 10 times more likely to experience psychosis while incarcerated than youth in the community. (It’s worth nothing that mental health conditions among youth are prevalent in the U.S.; nearly 50% of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 have had a mental health disability at some point in their lives, and an estimated 22.2% of these adolescents experienced “severe impairment and/or distress.”)
People with mental health conditions who come into contact with the criminal legal system are undertreated, especially those who are not white. Less than half of people with a mental illness in local jails receive treatment while incarcerated, and 63% of people with a history of mental illness do not receive treatment while incarcerated in state and federal prisons. What’s more, incarceration often exacerbates symptoms, and, as a result, people with “serious” mental health conditions often end up remaining incarcerated for a longer period of time than those without.
How Ableism Has Influenced the Way Funders Look at this Issue
This data illustrates a pervasive problem in the United States: the perception that people with mental health conditions–especially “serious” ones such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder–are dangerous.
While some studies show people with these “serious” mental illnesses are somewhat more likely to be aggressive or violent, the research is mixed, and often other factors that have nothing to do with the illness play a role. Most people with mental health disabilities are not violent; many of the sorts of acts that mentally ill people are criminalized for are minor offenses such as disorderly conduct, loitering, shoplifting, or petty theft. People with mental health conditions are more likely to experience violence perpetrated against them than engage in violent behavior themselves.
This ableism toward people with mental health conditions has nonetheless influenced the way funders give, Mia Ives-Rublee, Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), said over email. While philanthropy has long supported organizations that fight diseases like cancer and diabetes, little funding has gone toward mental health. According to the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, only 1.3% of philanthropic donations between 2015 and 2018 supported mental health initiatives.
“Mental health disabilities are often seen as human weaknesses or failures rather than biological medical conditions,” Ives-Rublee, who holds a master’s degree in social work from UNC Chapel Hill, explained.
But Lauren Shallish, an Associate Professor of Disability Studies in Education at Rutgers-Newark whose work focuses on the special education-to-prison pipeline, stressed in an email that many other factors are in play. “The determination of a ‘worthy life’ is persistently influenced by perceptions of ability, race, and behavior in educational and clinical contexts.”
How Philanthropy Can Combat Stigma and Address Barriers to Preventative Mental Health Care
Funders can play a role in combating the stigma around mental health conditions and the shortage of mental health providers (more than 85% of counties in the United States have a shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other licensed care providers) as well as address barriers to mental health care in several ways. For example, they can support culturally competent mental health programs or pay for cell phone data or internet for those in mental health deserts such as in rural areas, Ives Rublee said. The key is supporting the flexibility of mental health treatment options to support people from different cultures, since “mental health can look different depending on the culture” or the state of the person.
“If someone is unable to describe anxiety in words, then talk therapy may not be the best route of treatment (particularly in the beginning),” Ives-Rublee said. “Other treatment options can include art therapy, exercise, or even traditional cultural practices.”
Philanthropy must ultimately empower impacted community members in this work, Ives-Rublee said. “One of the biggest failures we often have is funneling money into organizations that have little direct interaction with communities other than to provide treatment,” she said. “Community members know what their communities need and that is often money. Money to pay for housing, food, clothing, and other necessities. Money to fund childcare, healthcare, and social activities. Society has often relied on trickle down economics with very little if anything ever trickling down. The communities remain resource deserts and that leaves people in crisis mode.”
Mitchell urged that funders not “go into communities with your mind made up as a funder what your agenda is and what your priorities [are].”
But ultimately, many approaches to supporting disabled people cost nothing, Shallish said. “It’s merely a shift in planning and perspective and developing an understanding of the vastness and variability of the disabled experience.”