Do you want to be arrested or undergo treatment? Prosecutor wants to bring new facility to Central Florida

MIAMI, Florida. – The Orange County Jail is often described as the largest mental health facility in Central Florida, with approximately 40% of inmates suffering from mental illness.

What if instead of going to prison they went into treatment?

That’s exactly what’s happening in Miami-Dade County, and Orange and Osceola County’s top prosecutor, Andrew Bain, is calling it a game changer.

He invited News 6 for a personal tour of Miami’s newest facility for his program

Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery

“I’m going to take you to our reception facility, which is great,” Steven Leifman said as he gave News 6 and Bain a tour of a brand new facility called the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery.

Leifman is a judge in Miami-Dade County and some call him a pioneer who changed the way police and the legal system treat people with mental illness who have committed crimes.

News 6 introduced the system he helped develop in 2021.

View Judge Steven Leifman’s profile on News 6

“You know, I tell people that it’s not that they don’t want to take their medication when they get to us. They don’t care if they’re breathing when they get to us,” he said.

Leifman helped develop and implement a program in Miami-Dade called The Criminal Mental Health Project.

Law enforcement there is now trained to identify suspects who may have mental health issues, and those suspects have a choice: go to prison or undergo psychiatric treatment.

The program, funded largely by Medicaid, has shown success.

According to Leifman, arrests have fallen 71% in the last decade.

The number of people re-offending and being rearrested has fallen from 75% to 20%.

“We see people walk right back out the door, and then we see them back again,” Bain said.

“Sometimes they get arrested before they leave the courthouse,” Leifman said. “It is ridiculous.”

Now Miami-Dade has spent $51 million renovating an old building into a new, state-of-the-art psychiatric facility to help more than 9,000 patients each year avoid criminal charges and get help.

“It’s my biggest thing,” Bain said. “You have to treat people like human beings first.”

“It’s not complicated,” Leifman said. “It’s all common sense.”

“You can solve so many problems after that,” Bain said.

Central Florida facility in progress

Bain said he wanted News 6 to join him on this tour in Miami because he wants to bring a facility like this to Central Florida.

“This is great. It really is,” he said. “It’s something that’s needed in Orlando and Osceola County. We have a great group of people working on this project that want this to happen, and Say yes to the project.”

Funding is the biggest obstacle.

We asked this question to Rep. Tom Keen, who represents parts of Orange and Osceola counties in the House of Representatives.

“We don’t need to lock up people who are mentally ill, do we? But that’s exactly what prison systems are doing, and that doesn’t seem to be what we should be doing with our criminal justice system,” he said.

He said this was a problem he could solve.

News 6 reached out to other Central Florida lawmakers and found support for this facility on both sides.

Republican Senator Jason Broeder said, “As we continue to address the urgent need for mental health and recovery services in our community, I want to echo Attorney General Bain’s frustration with funding initiatives to explore a treatment facility similar to that in Miami.” I would like to work with Attorney General Bain to explore the unique needs of Central Florida and the potential for establishing a mental health treatment and recovery center.”

Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani said, “We must focus on intervention rather than incarceration for nonviolent crimes that affect mental health.”

Bain said he is eyeing a site to develop a similar facility in the Orlando area, but declined to provide details.

He said he didn’t want to jinx it.

“Do you want to be arrested for a crime or do you want to voluntarily enter this diversion program?” Bain asked.

He said he would work to easily answer that question in the next legislative session.

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