What To Read This Week
1. Somewhere To Go.
Crisis stabilization centers, which provide “substance use disorder and behavioral health support services” for people experiencing acute mental illness or intoxication, give first responders an alternative to bringing a person in crisis to a jail or emergency room.
“They won't have to languish in emergency rooms or jail cells.” In Bellingham, Washington, the Anne Deacon Center For Hope provides “adults in crisis because of drugs, mental health problems or both” with a place to “get the help they need immediately.” Sometimes that help is simply “a 12-hour involuntary hold while they sober up or get medications to steady them.” But even in those situations, the Center is a better option than either overcrowded emergency rooms, which need the space for heart attacks and burst appendix; or jails, which can leave a residue of criminal justice system involvement that makes it harder for people to find stability through employment, education, and housing.
“Healing and hope will be found there.” In Columbus, Ohio, the Franklin County Mental Health and Addiction Crisis Center will be “a first of its kind in the state” and “game-changing, patient-focused facility designed for those in the midst of mental health and substance emergencies.” When it launches in 2025, “the round-the-clock, home-like center” will “serve anyone 18 or older regardless of immigration status, insurance or residency,” and “include space for outside mental health and social service providers, services for families, an urgent care, pharmacy services, and medical support for substance abuse disorders and detox.” As the Columbus Dispatch editorial board put it: “People in a mental health or substance abuse crisis deserve care in a warm, welcoming, safe and appropriate place.”
2. Cash Assistance For Victims of Gun Violence.
For CBS News, Sara Machi reports on Chicago’s new “Emergency Supplemental Victims’ Service Fund,” which aims to “ease the financial burden and trauma inflicted on those directly impacted by gun violence … The idea is to give financial assistance for people who are shot, or their surviving family members; money that can be used on medical costs, lost wages, relocation, and funeral expenses.”
ICYMI: Safer Cities conducted a national poll last year which found that voters strongly support the type of direct cash assistance that Chicago’s new victim service fund provides:
86% of likely voters say it is important for survivors of violent crime to have costs covered for relocation when they face a continued physical safety threat.
85% of likely voters say it is important to provide no-cost medical care, such as mental health services, for a crime victim’s family member.
83% of likely voters say it is important that survivors of violent crime have costs covered for funerals, for example, when a child is murdered and the parents need to cover burial costs.
82% of likely voters say it is important that survivors of violent crime have lost wages covered when they cannot work for a period of time.
3. Momentum for Community Violence Intervention Keeps Growing:
The Biden White House praised the “$50 million in Community Violence Intervention programs” included in the omnibus funding bill that passed Congress in the final days of last year.
The newly elected mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, Craig Greenberg, pledged to expand the city’s community violence intervention program now that he’s in office, lauding it as a vital component of his plan to make Louisville a safer city.
The Medical University of South Carolina has launched a new community violence intervention program with the goal of “reducing overall crime in identified hot spots, reducing interpersonal violence, reducing gun violence and reducing gang participation.” The program also provides targeted assistance—including “food, clothes, shelter, therapy and education”—to people at high-risk of being a perpetrator or victim of gun violence.
