“Healing Justice” was a two-day series that examined how improved mental health care in U.S. communities and prisons could reduce incarceration and recidivism rates, which are higher in America than anywhere in the world. My series was produced with support from the Association of Health Care Journalists’ European Health Study Fellowship, funded by The Commonwealth Fund. I undertook the project because the United States has the highest rates of incarceration and recidivism in the world.
Many mentally ill adults cycle endlessly in and out of local jails and state prisons, and critics contend greater investment in mental health services could reduce prison populations in Michigan and across the country. I traveled to Norway in March 2019, and learned how innovative approaches to both mental health and criminal justice have helped Norway reduce incarceration and recidivism. I started my journey in Bergen, Norway, where I met with psychiatric nurses who staff a Mental Health Ambulance that responds to situations that often, in the United States, result in a police response.
I also met with Vibeke Hellesund, the peer support specialist on an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team similar to one that helped Hellesund’s own recovery from severe mental illness. Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle in Tromso, Norway, I met with a forensic psychiatrist, who introduced me to a man, named “Stein”, who murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Stein spent three hours in jail before he was transferred to a mental hospital, where he now lives freely and independently in an apartment on the hospital grounds. I then traveled to Halden Prison, south of Oslo, where I spent two days observing Norwegian correctional approaches — such as dynamic security and at-home visits with family — that help keep 80% of the county’s inmates from re-offending after release.
In the United States, I interviewed multiple officials, including the director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections, who — along with officials from other states — has visited Halden Prison and is adopting prison reforms based on the Norwegian model. I also interviewed Michigan Department of Corrections officials and toured the Woodland Center Correctional Facility near Detroit, which treats Michigan’s most severely mentally ill criminal offenders. In Detroit, I found Darian Smith-Blackmon, an autistic and severely mentally ill 19-year-old who was jailed after killing a man at his adult foster care home. Darian was discharged from the Wayne County Jail to a hospital emergency room after being found incompetent to stand trial for first-degree murder, because no beds were available at Michigan’s public mental hospitals. I was able to contrast Stein’s story with Darian’s to illustrate how individuals are impacted by policy decisions in the two countries.
My series included photos and videos from interviews with corrections officials, mental health professionals, prisoners, and family members in the U.S. and Norway. Data from multiple sources was used to illustrate America’s underinvestment in mental health services, and the enormous expense of incarceration. One graphic showed how incarceration increased in the U.S., as American mental hospitals were shuttered over several decades. Following publication, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget McCormack and Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton of Ann Arbor said they plan to visit Norway to study its mental health and prison systems, with a mind to developing Michigan-based reforms. Clayton has taken the lead on forming a Michigan delegation, and plans to submit grant proposals to fund their trip.