New citywide effort brings health, justice, and social-service systems together to address behavioral health needs and reduce the cycle of incarceration
By MOCJ Staff
For New Yorkers struggling with mental illness, substance use, housing instability, and other complex needs, contact with the criminal legal system can become a cycle that is difficult to break.
New York City is taking a new step to change that.
The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) has launched the NYC Justice & Behavioral Health Council, bringing together city health and criminal justice agencies, social-service organizations, clinical experts, and community providers to rethink how the justice system responds to people whose involvement is connected to unmet behavioral health needs.
The goal: connect people to the right care and support earlier, reduce unnecessary incarceration, and improve public safety.
“This is a new moment for New York City and our criminal justice ecosystem,” said Justine Olderman, New York City’s Criminal Justice Coordinator. “The [Mamdani] administration is bringing renewed attention, focus, dedication, and commitment to building a criminal legal system that is more just, more fair, smaller, and safer.”
“It is our job; it is our duty — to do better.”
A new approach to public safety
Deanna Logan, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, and Erin Dalton, Commissioner for the New York City Department of Social Services spoke about the Mamdani administration’s broader effort to bring a public-health lens to public safety.
“For some people deeply involved in the justice system, incarceration often occurs alongside untreated mental illness, substance use disorders, homelessness, and other behavioral health challenges that make stabilization difficult,” said Logan. “This cross-agency collaboration is focused on care and stabilization — priorities that will improve lives and communities.”
A public-health approach involves cross-agency collaboration among MOCJ, the Office of Community Safety, the Department of Correction, Correctional Health Services, Health + Hospitals, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Social Services, the Human Resources Administration, and the Department of Homeless Services as well as critical system stakeholders to better address the needs of justice-involved people with unmet behavioral health needs.
The entire council will meet quarterly, while committees will meet more frequently to focus on specific issues and challenges, including:
- Improving coordination and information sharing among stakeholders
- Reducing barriers for justice-involved people to access behavioral health care.
- Developing clinical workforce pipelines and addressing retention challenges.
- Expanding the NYC Justice Training Institute, which provides training and technical assistance to agencies and providers serving people involved in the justice system.
- Identifying policy and practice changes that improve access to care for populations with unique needs, including young people, women, and people with developmental disabilities.
Why this matters for public safety
New York City has made significant progress in both reducing crime and the jail population. But there is more work to be done, especially with respect to addressing the unmet behavioral health, substance use, and housing needs of New Yorkers who experience repeated contact with the justice system.
Data presented at the council’s launch show the scale of the challenge:
- 60% of people currently in New York City jails are enrolled in mental health services.
- 28% are homeless or housing insecure.
- 30% have an alcohol use disorder.
- 25% have an opioid use disorder.
- 22% have a serious mental illness.
The council will identify ways of better meeting the needs of this complex population while they are in jail, strengthening release planning for them, and increasing their engagement with community-based services when they are released.
A generational opportunity to rethink our use of jails
The council’s work is also connected to New York City’s effort to close Rikers Island and reduce our reliance on detention and incarceration.
“When we close Rikers, it is our moment to think about, ‘what should the city’s pretrial justice system look like, and how can we use jail in a way that looks very different than how we’re using it today?’” said Dana Kaplan, NYC’s Close Rikers Czar. “The generational opportunity to Close Rikers is also a generational opportunity to plan for the type of criminal legal system our city actually deserves.”
For Ayesha Delany-Brumsey, Ph.D., Commissioner of the Office of Community Safety, the effort is ultimately about expanding how New York City defines safety.
“We should be able to build a system in NYC that focuses on improving access to safety; that supports the people who are most at-risk,” Delany-Brumsey said.
“People with behavioral health needs and chronic health conditions are disproportionately represented in the criminal legal system,” she noted, “making improved access to care a critical part of building a system that is smaller, safer, and fairer.”
Olderman says the need for change is clear.
“In an ideal world, the people we are talking about would not be in the criminal legal system,” she said. “Unmet behavioral health needs drove them into the system, but system entanglement made things so much worse.”
She says the Justice & Behavioral Health Council represents a commitment to changing that trajectory — bringing health, human-services, and justice systems together to focus resources where they can have the greatest impact.
Because improving public safety also means helping people get the care and support they need for stabilization.