This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject to monitoring and recording exactly a hundred years. That's manly. I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know that was that was real payingful man, no, because my life was discarded as if you know, like I was a piece of trash or something, you know, a hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted to do things I wouldn't committing crimes. You know. That was a very good young man. That is what happened in so many cases. The cops have a hunch because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch, they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these wrongful convictions. They opening, uh, the cell door, and I'll walk downstairs. And I actually walked down stairs to be outside. It felt very strange, um to be, like I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream. But then again it wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today, we have a very interesting, important and timely topic that we're going to cover that we haven't talked about in Death before, which is the treatment of people with mental health challenges in the criminal justice system and the shame of the way that we as a country handle this disability. And we're going to have a conversation today with two extraordinary people. Kelly Grimes is here. Kelly's been in and out of prison due to her condition, and she's going to share her experience with us. So Kelly, welcome to the show. Thank you. And also with us is a gentleman named Vincent Atchity, and Vincent is the executive director of the Equitas Project, has been since two thousand fifteen. The Equitas Project is a non part of a nonprofit organization that focuses on disentangling mental health and criminal justice. They work to cultivate a shared commitment to prioritize personal liberty and human potential over punishment and confinement. And that's a cause we can all get behind. So Vincent, welcome to Wrong for Conviction. Thank you. It's good to be here. So Kelly, let's start with you. Where are you from. I'm from Self Jersey, but I've been um living in New York City since in and out and um, so yeah, you're in New Yorker here, since that's good enough, which we count you in of ours. Now you know what I mean. And you've been in and out of the system. And I think your story is an example of what's wrong. Um it's one of unfortunately millions of examples of what's wrong with the way we handle what should be treated as a medical issue. And now I want to turn to Vincent, because Vincent, this work must be maddening to you, because it's like trying to slay a dragon. Right, how did we go so wrong as a country, and how do we get to this place where we incarcerated people who need help, who are just our fellow citizens, they're Americans, right. I think it goes way back. But we've been doing this wrong since the dawn of time. Basically, we've got medieval approach to mental health that persists in this country, and responding to people's mental health challenges with police batons and handcuffs and tasers and squad cars and jail cells is just never the right response to a person's health needs. Right, and then it gets worse once you get into the system and of course, Kelly can speak to this firsthand. I know it's a very difficult topic for you, Kelly, but para doxically, when people with these challenges get stuck in our gulag system, they are fundamentally incapable in many cases of following the orders that are given to them by the guards, and as such they received punishment after punishment, they end up in solitary confinement, which, of course then the spiral goes downward because you know, anyone would go crazy and solitary confinement. But if you're already you know facing, you know your personal demons, it's going to exacerbate that situation when they should be getting psychological treatment, substance abuse treatment, other things. Instead they're being locked up for things that they're out of their control in many cases. And Kelly, again, I think it's courageous of you just to come in and share your story. I know how difficult it is. So how did you first get into the system? Um? I first got into the system years ago, but my last time in a system was on Micro's Island. Were spent five months and I got into the system because I committed a crime crean arseny, and one I got onto Micros Island. It was brought to my attention at I did have a mental health issues and that was the reason why my life was spiraling. The CEOs are not trained to deal with people who are bipolar, who are schizophrenic, who have depression, who have psychosis, which is probably a symptom of mental illness, but but they're not trained to deal with that. They are trained to restrain, you know, lock up, you know, and things of that nature. So people with mental health issues usually wound up, like you said, in solitary confinement or in like a mental health part of the prison, which do not have trained professionals to deal with them. They just lock them up. And there are so many terrible stories, and Vincent, you would know, what is the percentage of people that they estimate in our you know, we have two point to two point three million people in prison. What percentage of those people have some of these issues or all of them? So two point to two point three million people in prison, and then maybe another twelve million people cycling in and out of jails in any given year, and upwards of eight percent have some kind of a mental health vulnerability, right, And I had read that statistic and I just I didn't want to believe it, so I just wanted to make you say it, because it's a staggering number, um and it's such a preventable, avoidable, terrible statistic. And inside of that statistics are all human stories. There's there. These are all human people like Kellys sitting in front of us now, right, These are not demons, right, they have demons, But there are people who grew up and for one reason or another, they face challenges that other people may not have. Well, it's not just the individuals, it's their entire family ecosystems. It's children and parents and cousins and brothers and sisters that are all damaged by this mismanagement of needs. And also being in a prison system or in the jail is so traumatic that even if you went in jail with no mental health issues, a lot of people leave with PTSD. They get out and they have nightmares, so very easily as well, that you can come in okay and then leave with a very serious mental health issue, or not leave at all, because there's a heightened risk of suicide immediately upon being confined in a jail. Right, and and let us not forget that amongst those people is a tremendous percentage of people who are military veterans who come in with issues that they didn't have before they entered the military. We send them to war, they come back, we don't treat them right that that we know the problems. Everyone knows the problems at the v A which are inexcusable. And you know one example of that, which is in New York case, right, was Jerome Murdaugh who was a fifty six year old veteran with schizophrenia and a substance of broute problem and he was found dead after a heating malfunction drove the temperatures in his cell at Rikers Island to over a hundred degrees. How was there when that happened? Um, yeah, I remember that, and they hit it. They didn't want anybody to talk about it. You know, there's rumors because they're out CEO's that talk with the mates like you formed these very weird relationships with your captors or could very easily be your friend and one minute and then abusing you the next minute. But um, they hid that. They didn't want anyone to speak of that. Right. And in case you're out there wondering while what was this guy doing in Rikers And here's the worst part. It gives me the chills every time I think of this or say it out loud. Mr Murdoch again, a veteran had been arrested for sleeping in the stairwell of a public housing project. Homeless veteran. I mean, what the funk are we doing? You know? And he's not alone. I mean, there was the guy that I don't think it was this year last year in Florida, right, the guy with mental abuse who was tortured to death. He was scalded to death by a guard who locked him in a burning shower for two hours until he literally melted. Right, It's like, what the I mean, where are we like there is some cause for optimism good? I would say this is probably the only, maybe the only area in the American scene right now, where there is not absolute division and chaos in terms of outlook on social issues. Wherever I go around the country, I find people across the board. You've got d A s, you've got public defenders, you've got sheriffs, you've got behavioral health providers, judges, conservatives and liberals who are in a state of near unanimous agreement that what we're doing is totally insane in terms of the costs and the outcomes associated with it. And so I think that there is a growing awareness among operatives in the scope of the court system and the law enforcement system that understand that they are managing a public health crisis with the tools of law enforcement and a court system, and it's a health crisis, and what we need is to turn this upstream into a health management situation. I think that there is emerging clarity about that change in direction for getting this right, and it may take time time, but I think that there is some cause for optimism. Well, when I was in jail, I was watching news one day in the dorm and I saw the news that Mayor Doublasio funded I think a hundred thirty million dollars for um like mental health for people in the penal system. Then I met a girl who was in the mental health court system, and um, she told me that, you know, to help you find housing, you know, medical health for your mental health and things of that nature. And UM, so I looked into that. I was able to get into mental health court, which is the court system that recognizes that sometimes your mental health is the catalyst for you committed a crime. And so I was with a long, tedious fight and having approved to my criminal judge that I was mentally ill, along with my lawyer Michelle Hauser, that I was, you know, able to get into this court system that recognizes mental illness in any event. Already an organization called Cases. They took my case. They was the liaison between myself and the judge, you know, to make sure I took my medication, to make sure I made my appointment, to make sure I got therapy, to make sure I found housing. Saday were my guardian to make sure I was making all the proper steps to become a productive citizen. You know, back in in the free world we call it. I think that Cases and their counselor Steve Dr Kan McKnight, um, Judge Juan Marashan, who presides over the Mental health Court, um really weird. But the d A of that mental health Court, she was very supportive. You know, she wasn't she wasn't quick to throw people with mental health issues into jail. Matter of fact, one time she even defended me because I got into some issues outside and Judge Marshawn was going to put me back in jail, and the d A said, you know what, let's not put her in jail. Let's just give her another chance. And I was like, d A is is supporting you know. So this is the beauty of having a court system that recognizes mental illness. And we need to vote for progressive das for that reason. Um, DAS races are so important. Not that many people vote in them, your vote really matters. We also need to have drug courts, which are coming into favor in a lot of different places, that can treat people for what they are well. And you know, I'm a great admirer of the work that cases does in providing careful case management and not just it's not just health care, but it's also access to housing and employment opportunities. It's a really thoughtful support of human development. And it's fantastic that we've got the progressive judges and das who get this. What's tragic is that why aren't we providing that kind of support for people before they get themselves in trouble with the justice system. We just ignore and neglect people's needs systematically and then intervene once some kind of an offense has been committed. It's it's just disastrously backwards. My mental health issues stemmed from childhood trauma that was left untreated, and that um caused my life to spar out of control, and it really manifested itself in my adult life because I didn't know why I wasn't living no more more normal lifestyle at this point. There are more families that have some experience with this issue than don't. I know, so many people from all walks of life. Um. You know one friend who I'm thinking of now, whose son was having paranoid delusions and you know, called the cops, and when the cops came, there was nothing there because there was nobody chasing him. There was nothing nobody in his house. So then he had these intame delusions against it, called the fire department, and when the fire department came, he felt bad. So he started a fire, you know, just because he was scared of the consequences if nothing was there for the fire department to find, and then he got charged with arson. Nobody got hurt. It wasn't a real fire. It was like a little fire on his stove, and then he ended up with five years in prison. It's like, you know these stories, there's just too many of them to count, and the costs to society are staggering, right, I mean for and I think this is one of the reasons why the conservatives have come around in large part to this issue and to activism in this issue, right, because inside the numbers, right, it costs. And this is this is not me, this is the city controller has said that it costs up round seven fifty dollars a day to keep someone in rikers Island locked up, not including court costs, not including police costs, over time, whatever else it might be. And we have cases where people like Victor Alvarez, right, who has been by his own account, locked up in Rikers a hundred and two times, right because of his substance abuse and other issues that he has challenges. They just cycle in and out, you know, again for people who are you know, fiscal conservatives, or who even care at all about where your tax dollars are going. You know, I'm going to quote from an article in the New York Times for two thousand fourteen where they talked about how many of the inmates are called frequent flyers, which is sort of a ironic whatever the hell named to use. But they constantly cycle and not of records Island, and that this task force identified more than four people who had been jailed at least eighteen times in the last five years, accounting for over ten thousand jail admissions during that period. It said the sixty seven percentage inmates had a mental health need, were severely mentally ill, severely meaning they had diseases like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and of them had a substance abuse problem. It's unbelievable. And you know myself, you know, because I, you know, grew up in a world of privilege, right, just by luck of birth. Right, I was born into an environment in which I was not subjected to this type of treatment, and I ended up in a rehab facility, you know, which is the appropriate way to deal with these issues. And you know what, as soon as I came out, I stopped doing whatever it was I was doing before. I stayed sober, and I built businesses, and I paid lots of taxes, and I helped other people. I employed people, And so that's what's another thing about this that really makes me nuts is the untapped potential right of people who are in similar situations to what I was in and who could be contributing to society instead of being a drag on society and living lives of abject misery because they can't figure out on their own. I couldn't figure out on my own either. I tried. I couldn't kick it until I went to a rehab and boom, boom, twenty eight days and I come out smelling like a rose. Yeah. In terms of lost opportunity, I think it's been calculated that we spend something like three trillion dollars in terms of lost economic productivity and collateral damage to people's earning power and impact on children's earning power when their parents are incarcerated, And some cities and communities are discovering the math just doesn't make sense, and they are in early stages of implementing alternatives to incarceration where they will create supportive housing environments for people with mental health concerns and finding that they can spend something like two fifths on that kind of intervention compared to what they're spending on the whole court process and incarceration. Jason was saying that he was privileged in things of that nature. So this problem, like, is it like a financial or well, I think we have two separate systems of justice in America. I mean then that that runs throughout. It's one system if you're if you can afford bail, for instance, and one if you can't. Um, you know, one if you can afford a private attorney, one if you can't. Look, if I could wave a magic one to fix all of it, I would. I mean, these problems are complex and they're not all going to be addressed overnight. Um. But there are things that we just do fundamentally wrong that other countries don't. Right. So while no one has a perfect system, for instance, and this goes back to what you were saying before, Kelly, in Scandinavia for instance, and most parts of Scandinavia, to become a corrections officer, you have to train for two years. You have to get I think it's like some sort of degree in psychology conflict resolution. They study, right, only ten percent of the people that apply for those jobs actually get them right. And you know, as a result, they have an entirely different environment inside and when they come out they have almost no recidivism. So they treat the incarcerated people there as human beings, you know, and with a focus on rehabilitation. Of course, you know, it still sucks because you're removed from your family and your job and your life, but you're not in an environment where you're subject to let's pace, let's call it what it is, torture. Right. As a result, you have a chance to come out and lead a healthy, productive life. And that's the right way to do it. And it's interesting right now we have groups that are bringing people from the corrections department of different states and cities over to Germany, Scandinavia, other places to see how they do it, and they're coming back with I think, a very different outlook, and that's one way the change is going to take place. Um. You know, Kelly, this goes back to you. For me, one of the most awful things about our criminal criminal injustice system is that we lock women up at a rate that is so out of step with the rest of the world. We have four point four percent of the world's population and we have thirty three percent of the world's female prison population, so we have one out of every three women in prison in the world. Is big, by the way, right, very big. It's almost eight billion people in the world. We have just three seventy million or whatever in America. It's crazy. This is crazy, you know. I don't really think that we have more evil people here than they do in the rest of the world, because there's only two possible conclusions. Either we have most evil people or else we're doing it totally wrong. And so inside those numbers are the human stories. And you know firsthand anecdotally, but you know the number of these women who have children. Oh yeah, I've seen women with children, and I've seen women who were pregnant inside the prisons. Also, I think that stems from to like you were saying, as far as the privilege, I did twenty five months or microsidan fight in my case because I couldn't afford the bill. I was not there for violent crime. I did my crime. I'm not here to deny that, but I couldn't afford the cash bail to get out. That's why a lot of women and men as well are in the jail system and prison because they couldn't afford to bail and do their case on the outside, which makes a big difference for some reason, like if you fight it on the outside, they call it, you know, jail house talk. Fight your case on the outside, rather than fight it on the inside. For some reason, you have a better chance of not going to prison. Right, And let's reflect on this for a second, right, and again inside the numbers, So you were accused of stealing about five thousand dollars worth of equipment a V equipment, TV whatever, toaster of and using a credit card that didn't belong to you, not like going in and sticking up a store, right, and so it was a non violent property crime essentially, right. And so you're accused of stealing five thousand dollars worth of goods and we spent about five hundred thousand dollars keeping you locked up on Rikers Islands. So how's that return on investment? Vincent? You want to you want to weigh in on that one. Well, it's just the most insane thing to do. And we systematically waste money and lives across the board. And you know, starting with childhood trauma, as soon as a kid start showing some signs of having some difficulty in integrating with a school community or something like that, we start flushing that person right away and creating this pipeline towards jail in prison that is insanely costly and fails to sort of optimize all the potential of this great human talent. You know, I had an opportunity. I was at Georgetown University a couple of years ago and got to hear they had been conducting and in prison writing course and there were a bunch of folks who had been released and they were reading the stuff that they'd written. Somebody asked, so, how many people that you ran into while during your prison sentence had some kind of talent? And they said, Oh, there's a whole lot of human potential that is just locked away at great cost. And so it's not just today's cost, it's the long term cost of what we're doing with whole populations of people and their children who could be contributing to the economy and enriching us all with their talent. Yeah. I asked Mike mill I had him on the podcast recently, and I asked him how many people does he think are locked up in this country that are just as talented as he is? And he said too many. Think about some of the greatest hip hop stars of our generation. Many of them had you know, checkered pasts, right, they did what they could do, turn a living where they and I'm not saying it's right wrong, I'm not judging it whatsoever. But it's impossible to believe that there aren't others who weren't lucky enough to avoid getting caught and locked up for the similar type of activities who were just as talented as a jay Z or whoever the legends that we have, right, So you know, you look inside of that and go, what would what would life be like without jay Z? Right? What would I mean? How much does he pay in taxes? Can you imagine? Right? You know, it's just madness. It doesn't make any logical sense, and it's sort of this vicious cycle, right, you know. Ironically, in that same task force for fourth, they talked about the difficulty of immediately restarting Medicaid services friendmates, right, because paradoxically, Medicaid coverage is canceled by the state while you're incarcerated, So we come out without coverage and you can't fill prescriptions for medicines that you need. And we know that the most danger time for people who come out is the first fourteen days out right, that's when they're most likely to die. Um, they're most likely to reoffend and be locked up again, which is where you get that revolving door. And there are great organizations, and I want to talk about the Legal Action Center, on whose board I serve right who are doing incredible work on restarting those things and on you know, forcing states and cities to reinstate your coverage before you come out. And they're also they've been working diligently on trying to create a protocol where you must be analyzed for mental health challenges before you're hearing, so that you can be diverted into the appropriate programs. And imagine what a difference that would make. And that's l a C dot org for people who want I think it's no Legal Action Center dot org. Sorry, Legal Action Center dot org. Well, the other crazy thing about the medicaid issue is that jails in prisons may be the only place where you are constitutionally guaranteed some access to healthcare, but as soon as you're incarcerated, you come off of Medicaid and you go on to the local dime in terms of the county budget in the county jail or the state budget for the prison system. So there's this weird financial shuffling that goes on away from providing healthcare on Medicaid to providing healthcare through private healthcare provider systems that are paid for with more local taxpayer money, right because the federal government would actually cover it if and when we get these changes instituted, which will benefit everybody. I mean, you know, it's interesting. I heard about one prison in Norway where the warden, when you're first admitted, he gives a speech and says, you know, when you come out, you may you may be my neighbor. So I'm going to treat you as I would want to be treated, right, and these people are going to be our neighbors. Right. What is the number like five million people come out of jail in America every year, some crazy number like that, right, And all of them have to go somewhere, and they have to exist. And if we want to have a safer society, it's really simple. We have to give these people a chance ends so that they don't have you know, I mean, if they have no options and they have to eat, something's got to give. And are also a mental stigma that goes with being incarcerated. The thing is this always knew that I could do better. I just didn't know how I would do a crime. Get Caughte not wanted to change my life somehow, it just didn't know how to do it. But then I would get out and I would go to myself, who's gonna hire me? What a felony? Nobody's gonna want me around? So I become my own abuser. Now I'm not letting myself move forward because I think everybody's looking at me funny. Who's gonna hire me, Who's gonna like me? Nobody wants a criminal in or neighborhood, and that's part of the recent of visim as well. Then I'll go do something else because I know my life is never going to change. Talk about wrongful convictions, sometimes it's hard for me to feel like there are convictions that aren't wrongful convictions when every sentence is kind of a life sentence in this country because you know it could be a five thousand dollar crime or something like that, and you carry that with you for the whole rest of your life in terms of the stigma you bear for and having to report for housing and employment. So like juries ought to be instructed, anybody's convicted, you're giving them a life sentence to some degree in this country, right and I go often refer to that as the second punishment, and it takes all different forms, right, everything from depriving people of the right to vote to depriving them of housing in some cases of there as we talked about, of their medications or their coverage. You know, there's been this whole movement to ban the box, right, which the Legal Action Center again has been involved with that, because you know, if you have to check that box, you might as well just not even apply for the damn job in many cases. But I think there's more awareness now and I'm sure that Equitas has played a role in this, where many companies are eliminating that protocol and there are companies who are out there who are actively trying to hire system affected people. And what I have found through this work, which again I've been doing it in two and a half decades, is that people who are out of the system by and large want nothing more than a chance, and given that chance, will work harder than people who may feel entitled to prove themselves because you know that it's just like you're throwing them a lifeline and they're gonna grab that life one, They're gonna hold on, They're gonna make it work, and we've seen such incredible success stories of people coming out. Was the guy that who was a carjacker, right, who just graduated Yale Law School and was recently admitted to the farm or forgetting his name. I mean, I can't fathom or or countenance judging Kelly or anyone else who has done something that's you know, against the law without looking as we're as we're supposed to, at where they came from and what they may have endured coming up, growing up, what opportunities and challenges they had or didn't have. You know, I'm not a religious person, but it's pretty easy for me to look at it, like walk a mile in somebody else's shoes before you jump to a conclusion and say this person needs to be thrown out with the trash. Well, and you talk about people really just wanting to succeed when they return to the community, but you know, people really want to succeed before they ever get involved in the criminal justice system. We don't create those kinds of opportunities, and those kinds of supports are just not available. And mental health is like the most prevalent illness that we've got in this country, and there's not a single family that doesn't have some kind of a mental health vulnerability somewhere in that family. And families of privilege can protect and surround and provide access to care for people and all kinds of installation that shield them from the consequences of their health driven behaviors. And families that don't have that kind of level of privilege, they're just exposed. And you know, it's a nation of outlaws. If you've ever driven a car, how many cars on the road are going the speed limit? We fledge the law constantly in this country. And it's the folks who are not of privilege and the folks with more unmanaged mental health driven behaviors that end up getting cause up in this so called justice system and where they're just driven from bad to worse. Yeah, and I can very much relate to what Kelly was saying before, because when I had substant abuse issues when I was a kid, I didn't want those issues. I wanted to stop. I just had no ability to figure out how to do it. And I even tried. I went to a a on my own. One time I lasted five days, and that time I lasted seventeen days. Um but you know, when you're in your environment and you're around the people that you're usually around, you know, it's an insidious disease. It's as they say, it's cunning, baffling and powerful. And I were just talking about the substance abuse problem. I was lucky I didn't have the other problems. But yeah, so you know, for me being able to go away for twenty eight days, you know, I've never experienced sobriety in probably ten years, and all of a sudden, I was like, wow, this is great, you know what I mean. Like, and plus i'd actually drink as much coffee as you want, and I am addicted to coffee and I don't care for me. It was I didn't know I had mental health issues. So it was hard because by the time I found out I had mental health issues, I had other problems. Not knowing is part of a problem as well. I thought I was normal. I thought, you know, there's just different walks of life. I thought that I was just a criminal. This is just who I am. And really it wasn't who I was. It was what I was made, you know, because of what happened to me when I was a child. So well, I would just say that it's normal not to know. And part of what normal is is how slow we've been as a creature to be comfortable talking about our mental health. And the truth is, nobody's mental health is like a flat line or always up. Everybody's got a mental health that's some kind of a curvy wave of ups and downs, and it can be that way over the course of the day or a week. And when you're on a down, that's when you've got behaviors that are the kind of behaviors that cause trouble that may not be just trouble with the law, but it's trouble with your loved ones and trouble with your family. And we got to learn how to talk about our mental health and be comfortable with each other's supporting each other's ups and downs in some kind of a way that is productive of better outcomes, and uh, not be in this state of sort of medieval ignorance. And you know, I don't know about you guys, but when I go to the doctor, I don't usually read my own X rays, you know what I mean? Like, so are we supposed to diagnose ourselves with the pendicitis or something like that? So I mean, it's equally unrealistic to ask someone to say, you know what, I think I might be schizophrenic, right, I mean, you know, and there's that old saying, if you're up to your ass an alligators, it's hard to remember to drain the swamp. And while you're dealing with these issues, because let's face it, most people are, you know, living day to day and trying to make ends meet and support their family. And they're busy, right, and so they don't have a lot of time for reflection or to try to find out what services are available or even if there are any services available, right which they are less and less. The other hard fact of the matter is that while our medical science has advanced by leaps and bounds over the course of the last thirty years in terms of research and even finding cures for things like cancer, our management of mental health is stuck in like the fifties when they invented thorazine in the pharmaceutical industry took over and started masking symptoms with drugs, and mental health research is underfunded and has not benefited from the same kind of aggressive funding and awareness driving that um, you know, cancer and multiple scorosis and multicular distreasistic fibrosis, you can breast cancer, you can rattle off a whole bunch of physical ailments that have there's hard driving research that puts us at the forefront of the world in terms of that kind of science. But if you're a family or a person who's got some kind of a mental health discomfort, you don't have the same level of confidence going into see get help that you do if you've got something wrong with your pancreas or your elbow, where you can go in and see maybe two providers, get a second opinion, come out with a reasonable diagnosis and a treatment plan. For a mental health issue, you can see twelve people and get twelve different medic ocasions and twelve different sort of sketchy diagnoses, and that at best they're masking your symptoms, not addressing any kind of curative approach to what it is that's driving your behavior. So there's some confusion around mental health that is not you can't just say go get help. It's not that easy to get that kind of help. So if someone's listening now and they have a friend or loved one who's suffering from any one of a number of these syndromes. Who do you call? What do you do? Whether you need help or you know someone who needs help, or whether you want to help, you can go to www Dot Equitas project dot org. Our mission is to disentangle mental health from the criminal justice system. You know, everyone knows. If you're, you know, in trouble, you can call nine one one, right, you can't call nine one one for this, And people do call nine one one and what happens to The police show up because they are the first responders, and one thing leads to the next. So, uh, you know, if you need help or you know somebody who needs help, take a deep breath before you call nine one one because it may lead in the wrong direction. Make sure you're getting health help, health assistance. Never forget that the police are not mental health workers. Their law enforcement officials. Most police are not trained to handle mental health crises. So if you want to help, please visit us at www. Dot Equitas project dot org and find other access to crisis services and mental health services in your state. All right, that's Equitas e q U I t A S Project project dot org. That's Equitas project dot org. Go there and we'll give you some some guidance and some places to turn. Okay, what else? There are crisis lines. Different states have put different as a crisis intervention lines in place. There's something called the crisis text Line where you could actually text for help and it's available seven and at least you're getting some kind of trained intervention. Uh. That is better than nothing. Crisis text line dot org Crisis text Line dot org. The earlier you intervene, the better you start noticing somebody's got a behavior that's making life difficult and more challenging than it should be for them. It's sort of like see something, you say something, and you can be polite about it, but you should intervene and try and get somebody some kind of help and guidance. I was just working for an organization which I'm not going to see their name, that I just stopped working for. It was support of Housing program for people with mental health challenges and um it was a building six stories that had studios for people with mental health challenges. Comes out at a shelter system and it comes out at a penal system. UM Like I was one of a peer specialists in the property managers. They're answered to when one of the clients got at a and or wasn't you know, doing like something proper was to doll nine one one. That's not the answer. This is not how you do people with you know, mental health. And sometime it wasn't even serious enough to call the police. It which just they felt agitated or you know, they were having a bad day, or and they wanted me to call the police for everybody, and I was like, I can't do this, I can't. It happens all the time. You can have a distraught mother who's got a grown son who's acting in some way that's disturbing and out of control and frightening, and so a mother will call nine one one and the police show up, and then in a moment of great emotional distress, you can shrug somebody off or make an elbow of somebody away who's reaching in or something like that. And then when you've got as a felony assault on a police officer and a whole series of unfortunate events that that mother never wanted to wish on their kids. So you go from a health crisis and you turn into this total human catastrophe. And it happens all the time, which is all the more reason why you have to get in front of these things, right, and for people who may be seeing early symptoms of something like this, don't wait until it's a crisis. Don't wait until you're faced with an actual threat to your well being and you may feel like you have no option but to call nine one one. And to be fair, that's not really what the police are here for, right, That's not what they went to the academy for. I mean, obviously they're here to serve and protect and they, you know, I think the vast majority of them are well meaning, and they went into this line of work because they had some you know, noble goal of helping people. But in that situation, there's really no good answer, right you're trying to it's a very very volatile and dangerous situation and domestic crisis like that. So I do encourage people to get in front of it. Go to Equitas project dot org or go to what was the text crisis text line dot org Crisis text lines dot org. So let me ask what's to you the same question? What would be if you had a magic wand and could wave it, what would you wave it at? What would you tackle for? What can we do. What what are here? Let me put it this way, people that are listening now and go, you know what I want to help? Right? What would you recommend they do? And and what can we all do to make the situation? But I start with you, Vincent, Well, for you know an individual, I would say what I said before, and that is, if you see something, you say something, You don't ignore a behavior or a problem. It doesn't get better. Even if you don't know where to begin, you begin by getting involved somehow and trying to develop comfort around talking about mental health. I would say, talking about mental health, how's your mental health today? Well, it's this way or it's that way. Start sharing a language for understanding how we are with each other and uh again visit our website Equitized project dot org. There's opportunities to sort of let your elected officials and local leaders know that you're concerned about the misuse of the court system to manage a healthcare problem, and try and contribute to an evolution in thought and practice around these issues. Community leaders, just get your heads together. That solutions aren't always always clear, but if you can get the people together who bear some contact with that population that's affected by our various healthcare and court systems. They can start pointing in the right direction together, and we know what makes a difference. You know, you get in there with early childhood intervention. The earlier the better with kids. You make sure that in an educational setting you're not having all kinds of harsh discipline meeted out to nine year olds that are acting up in a classroom. You have to realize that a nine year old is acting up in a classroom is a nine year old and needs help, not suspension or expulsion, which leads them on this whole pathway to justice involvement. We need to develop access to housing and communities where we can spend a fraction of what we're spending on jails and prisons in order to get people into shelter that is accompanied with some kind of support and healthcare that doesn't just cycle them back out into the streets and into the systems. And uh, you know, I think that we have to have some urgency about it. And we can think that right now, we've got a huge incarcerated population, people who have had their mental health needs ignored and neglected their entire lives, and those people may need all kinds of extraordinary support over the course of the whole rest of their lives. But if we look at today's five year olds and start thinking about what does it take to make a human being developed into a successful, well balanced individual who can participate in the economy, we can change that over the course of the next ten years so that ten years from our fifteen year olds aren't entering the system at the same rate that they're entering now. If we start getting this right with the kids. If you want to help make a difference and have money that you can donate, please visit us at www dot Equitas project dot org. We are working to build a movement to make this change happen. As a victim of childhood trauma, I would like families to not think that it's going to go away, Like we have a very old school mentality about children. They bounce back and they're resilient and things like that. If something bad happens to your child, I don't think that time is going to make it go away, because it doesn't, you know, And eventually that issue was going to manifest itself into their life, you know. And I think that we should erase that stigma of what happens in the house, stays in a house. Just please talk to people. Please take your children to get proper help. Right, and one possible thing to do would be to talk to a councilor every school has a counselor right code to see the counselor they may be able to direct you to the right social services or other professionals. But if you don't, if you don't say something, nothing's gonna happen, and nothing's going to change in the situation will likely get worse. I will also like to say that mental health is treatable with therapy and the proper medication. I change my life. You know, I have my mental illness under control with mencation in therapy. Find it a proper support, like Jason just said, is very important. So this has been a great discussion. We do have to wrap up just because of time, but I want to leave. This is the part of the show where I get to be lazy, which I like that um so um you know, whant smiling because it's his favorite part of the show too. So this is the part of the show where um, I get to thank both of you for coming in. Vincent Atchity, Executive director of Equitas Project and Kelly Grimes system affected advocating here for people in the system who suffer from mental health challenges. Thank you for both for being here and sharing your stories and your wisdom. And this is where I get to turn it over to you for closing thoughts. Since Kelly's the start of the show, Vincent, you get to go first, she gets to go last. Well, thank you, And you know, I guess I would just say that I think of mental health is the primary public health crisis, the most costliest public health crisis that we've got going in this country right now. And you know it's affecting people, It's affecting their families. Violence is a consequence all kinds of lack of productivity, depression, I think is one of the most costly health conditions there is in this country. And where it hurts the most are poor understanding and poor management. And mental health hurts the most is when the law gets involved and this wholly wrong system takes over for managing the outcomes of human beings that are really got enormous potential for making us all a healthier, more prosperous nation if we were to get this right. So I would just say that getting this right and disentangling mental health and criminal justice. I think of it as dumb most urgent issue for our future as a country, even though it is a backwards system right now, it's just how it is, and no at in this backward system that you can change your life around. There is help. There are alternative to incarceration programs that you should seek out, and just know that there's a different way of life, there's help. Know that mental health challenges are manageable. Um some of them are curable and you just have to keep trying. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to anass project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Awards. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with signal Company Number one