ORLANDO, Fla. – A slew of new state laws will take effect on Wedneday, Oct. 1, including a measure aimed at enhancing mental health support in the criminal justice system.
“This marks a turning point for Florida with this act,” said Dr. Marni Stahlman, the president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. “Instead of automatically jailing people with mental illnesses for minor, non-violent offenses, it gets them screened and into treatment. That’s the purpose.”
News 6 spoke to Stahlman a day before the implementation of Senate Bill 168, intended to divert people experiencing mental health problems from the criminal justice system to receive appropriate treatment instead.
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Dubbed the Tristan Murphy Act, the law is named after a 37-year-old man who killed himself while incarcerated at a state prison work program. Murphy had a history of schizophrenia and had been imprisoned on a littering charge.
“This law is now stipulating that [inmates] must be evaluated,” Stahlman said. “And if there is a severity in the illness, then they have to go into a treatment facility.”
Among other things, the law will permit counties and municipalities to establish misdemeanor mental health diversion programs and pretrial felony diversion programs.
It will also require mental health evaluations for inmates with a history of incompetency before they are placed on probation and released back into society.
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Stahlman cautioned that while the goal of the law is admirable, the law itself will not fix things overnight.
“This is about saving lives, cutting repeated arrests, and making our justice system smarter and safer,” Stahlman said. “But there’s a lot more that goes into it, and there’s a lot more work to be done.”
Stahlman pointed to a deficit of beds and a substantial number of people grappling with mental health illnesses.
“Diverting more individuals into the system–while it looks good on the front end—is going to create a backlog and possibly these individuals will still not receive the adequate care that they need because of wait times,” said Stahlman.
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