Nothing to Replace the Institution
By Albert B. Kelly
Over the course of several decades, government at all levels go through cycles of being mostly “hands-off” while at other times, government has been more “activist”, serving as the catalyst for change. Whether in “hands-off” mode or “activist” mode, rarely does government strike the right balance.
These cycles and the role of government has been on my mind quite a lot over the past couple of years as I’ve watched the trifecta of homelessness, substance abuse, and mental illness manifest itself on the streets of my community and in several other communities as well.
We tend to want to see homelessness as a separate and distinct problem from mental illness just as we tend to categorize substance abuse as its own thing. But if you spend any time trying to deal with one problem, say homelessness, you quickly realize that the others are close at hand.
I’m not sure that the government was ever any good at dealing with this trifecta of homelessness, mental illness and substance abuse. What we got really good at was criminalizing poverty, substance abuse and to a lesser degree mental illness. And so long as the problem was locked up in jails and prisons, we could afford not to notice or care.
But lately we’ve been on a down-sizing kick and by down-sizing I mean we’ve used the pandemic and concerns over public health to empty out the prisons. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, from the end of 2019, when the pandemic was just getting started through the end of 2021, New Jersey’s prison population decreased some 33%.
I recall the virtual meetings and phone calls with officials up and down the bureaucratic food chain discussing the tiers of inmates to be released in our counties and the assurances that all would be well. Over the last couple of years, over 5,000 individuals have been released onto our streets.
At first glance, who could argue with this effort to “decarcerate”? Over the decades, you couldn’t sell taxpayers on any meaningful funding for mental health and addiction services, but you could always get hearty approval for building more prisons and jails and being tough on crime and so we did. We cast a wide dragnet and many were caught up.
But now that we’ve decided to release onto our streets roughly a third of the previously incarcerated, we’ve neglected to replace what the institution provided. What looks at first glance like social justice is really one hell of a quick fix to make ends meet in a budget where you’re not quite sure what your tax revenues will be.
But is it really justice? Let’s face it, for half these people, the DOC was far more stability then they could ever hope for now that they’re out on the street. The DOC told them when to get up, when to eat, take their medication, go to work, recreate, and when to sleep. They had warmth and shelter.
Now that we’ve done some emptying out of our prisons and jails, I see growing numbers sleeping behind the ATMs, under bridges, and in the bank drive-thru. When they’re not idling away the hours self-medicating with alcohol, they’re yelling at the demons in their head and scaring passersby all because there is nothing to replace the institution.
If we’re going to be serious about social justice as opposed to simply shuffling bodies around and creating new ghettos, then we have to invest in facilities and programs and personnel to provide stability in the lives of these people. Stability will look different depending on the person involved.
For those suffering from mental illness, stability might involve a long-term care facility, first to deal with their substance abuse issues and then to provide them with treatment. For the chronically homeless, it may be a tiny home village that provides a home base and an access point for daily and weekly wrap-around services. To do it right, we will spend more than we ever did locking them up.
But I guarantee that if we ignore this state of affairs, there will come a tipping point in the not-too-distant-future when we’ll go toward candidates screaming about “tough on crime”, building more prisons as we re-criminalize poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse and we’ll vote for them because we’re sick and tired of seeing this mess on our streets. That’s the price for getting it half right.