D.A. Price has made no secret of the fact she wants to “end mass incarceration,” which means opening the jails and letting everyone out. This isn’t going to happen anytime soon, thank goodness, although we have to remain vigilant. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and Price thinks she’s found another way to give murderers, thieves and assaulters a get-out-of-jail-free card: Just claim they’re mentally ill, and argue that mentally-ill people deserve “care, not cages.”
Now there’s a catchy little phrase. It’s short, alliterative and emotionally appealing, like a soap detergent commercial. The slogan has been popularized in the East Bay in recent years by an anti-cop outfit called “Prison Renaissance,” which says it fights “to close jails and push local government to prioritize alternatives to incarceration for folks facing mental health crises.” No one is suggesting that a truly psychotic individual should be in jail. Problem is, these anti-prison groups never get around to clinical definitions of mental illness. Instead, they talk about “the isolation, trauma, and deprivation [inmates] experience while incarcerated,” which lead to “unbearable thoughts like never seeing their families again.” I suppose such thoughts are difficult, but do they constitute “mental illness,” or merely regret at past behavior? That the criminals might have thought about the consequences of their crimes beforehand doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Prison Renaissance people.
I think most of us realize that being in prison isn’t exactly a walk in the park, and that’s one reason why we don’t commit crimes. I might hanker for that iPhone in the Apple Store, but I’m not going to steal it, not only because that’s immoral, but because I don’t want to end up in jail.
So Pamela Price’s strategy is to form this new “Mental Health Commission” to help her justify the prison releases she’s planning and has already started. By packing the MHC with progressives who agree with her, Price seeks to vastly expand the diagnosis of “mental illness” to include almost any prisoner who claims to feel “isolation, trauma and deprivation.” The D.A. will then offer these people “the responsible justice they deserve.” And you know what that means: Letting them go, maybe with a prescription for Xanax.
Now, let it be noted that Alameda County already has a “Mental Health Advisory Board,” overseen by the Board of Supervisors. “Much of the MHAB’s work over the last year (2021-2022),” says their annual report, “focused on ways to help implement the Board of Supervisors’ directive to reduce the number of seriously mentally ill (SMI) individuals at Santa Rita Jail.” Like the MHC, the MHAB also has a catchy little slogan: “Care First, Jail Last.” Sadly, the agency doesn’t seem to have accomplished very much: although the full board or its constituent committees meet at least three times a week, they do very little except to conduct gabfests and make recommendations, especially for more funding. They also do a lot of blaming: their ineffectiveness is due, they say, to the Board of Supervisors’ underutilization of their talents.
So does Alameda County need both a Mental Health Advisory Board and a brand-new Mental Health Commission? For Pamela Price, the answer is yes. The more agencies, the better! This redundancy is a trademark of the far left’s love of bureaucracies. They get to hire their supporters to issue reports no one reads.
We can anticipate Price relentlessly pushing to free as many prisoners as she possibly can. And, to the extent most of these prisoners will be Black men, she’ll argue that Black men are “over-represented” in prisons; hence the greater need for a Mental Health Commission that will find them mentally ill, instead of guilty of the crimes they have committed. Price will thus justify dropping criminal charges against them.
Price [to Prisoner “D”] How is your mental state?
Prisoner D: Terrible. I feel isolated, traumatized and deprived.
Price: Then I declare you mentally ill! Prisoner is ordered released from jail, on the condition that he takes Xanax. And please, Prisoner D, don’t kill any more people.
Prisoner D: I promise!
Here we go down that rabbit hole. Are you feeling better about walking around downtown at night knowing that P. Price is your D.A.?
Steve Heimoff