Advocates are urging New York State to stop treating prisons as mental health facilities and instead invest in community-based care for Black and brown people living with mental illness. This urgent message was delivered at a packed panel discussion titled Shadow of the System: Understanding Racial Disparities in the Mental Health and Criminal Legal System, held Wednesday at the Brooklyn Central Library that featured public health and prison reform experts who traced the current crisis to deep-rooted systemic failures from slavery to mass incarceration.
Many of the speakers urged the state to pass the Treatment Court Expansion Act, which expands alternatives to incarceration for people with mental illnesses.
"...it's important to me to bring awareness to the ways in which our society's approach to mental health diagnosis and treatment has failed black people. I've seen it in my work as a nurse, where I worked up close with patients in crisis, and in my work as a legislator, where I've learned about the impacts of mass incarceration around the state,” Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, the lead sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
Panelists included Jonathan McLean, chief executive officer of CASES (The Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services); Dr. Claire Green-Forde, a leader in mental health and health equity; and Dr. Robert Fullilove, a public health researcher and civil rights activist. They traced the current mental health crisis in the Black community through history slavery and to the closure of mental health institutions during the War on Drugs in the 1970s, which redirected thousands of individuals into the criminal legal system through the 1980s.
Today, nearly 40% of incarcerated people nationwide have a diagnosed mental illness, with Black and brown individuals disproportionately represented, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Dr. Fullilove compared today’s political climate to the late 1960s. “This year, 2025, feels to me like 1968,” he said. “The war on drugs has had an enormous impact on the incarceration of Black and brown people, justified by creating an image in the mind of the average American that Black and brown men on drugs, in clear emotional distress, are the most important problem facing America today.”
The same thinking which fueled the War on Drugs by targeting inner-city communities and locking up Black men still influences the closure of mental health institutions and the use of prisons as treatment centers. The U.S. now has 4% of the world’s population but holds approximately 25% of the world's incarcerated population, Fullilove said.
“We pathologize normal human experiences, and we pathologize human trauma, because our [Black] pain is seen as violence, while the pain of others deserves care,” said Dr. Green-Forde. “That’s where we are today, and why we are all here."
Outside the discussion, organizations including NAMI-NYC, RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison), the Justice Peer Initiative), Brooklyn Defender Services, Freedom Agenda, Women’s Community Justice Association, Common Justice, and Nana’s Living Room, hosted informational tables with comprehensive pamphlets and opportunities to volunteer.
The panelists agreed that lasting change will require bold legislation. True reform, they argued, must replace jail time with community-based care and be backed by sustained investment in culturally-responsive mental health services.
“History is critically important,” McLean stated. “If you don’t understand history, it is going to be very difficult to understand where we find ourselves today and how to think about what we need to do in the future. You cannot change people’s behavior, but there is a historical context that gives us the ammunition we need to craft a solution that will help us and carry us forward.”
