Why a JLI?

Judges, with their unique ability to convene stakeholders, promote alternatives to traditional case processing, and hold other agencies accountable have been important catalysts for improving their communities' responses to people with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system.

The power of judges to convene key players in a community is explained well by one judge:

"When I was a public defender trying to address this problem, I called a meeting of all the key stakeholders, and no one came. When I became a judge I called the same meeting. Everyone was five minutes early."

But it is not just the ability to convene stakeholders that puts judges in a unique leadership position. Judges also determine how individual cases proceed, and whether alternatives to incarceration should be considered. In addition, judges, with the mandate of the court, have the ability to hold accountable other criminal justice agencies, and even non-criminal justice agencies such as mental health and substance abuse providers. It is not surprising, then, that judges have been at the forefront of change in their communities; many of the most prominent national spokespeople on the need to address the influx of individuals with mental illness into the criminal justice system are members of the bench.

In order to harness the potential for judicial leadership, the Council of State Governments (CSG) Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project, the Technical Assistance and Policy Analysis (TAPA) Center for Jail Diversion, and an advisory board of the nation's foremost judicial leaders on criminal justice / mental health issues developed the Judges' Criminal Justice / Mental Health Leadership Initiative (JLI).