When the Justice System Becomes the Mental Health System

‍Why Minority Mental Health Awareness Month Must Include Conversations About The Impact Of Incarceration

Every July, National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, also known as BIPOC Mental Health Month, established in honor of author and advocate Bebe Moore Campbell, calls attention to the unique mental health challenges facing communities of color in the United States.

At Avenues for Justice (AFJ), this month is a continuation of the conversation in May, during Mental Health Awareness Month, where we examined how mass incarceration impacts the mental health of families and communities. We argued that Mental Health Awareness Month must address the systems driving a public health crisis. July asks us to go deeper: to look specifically at why Black and Brown communities carry a disproportionate share of this crisis, and why the systems meant to respond often fail them.

The Disparities Are Not About Prevalence. They Are About Access.

Here is what the data shows: communities of color do not experience mental illness at dramatically higher rates than white Americans. What they experience is dramatically less access to care, poorer quality of care, and a greater likelihood that their mental health needs will be met with punitive measures instead of treatment.

Consider what the research shows:

• Among adults reporting fair or poor mental health, 50% of white adults received mental health services in the past three years, compared with just 39% of Black adults and 36% of Hispanic adults, according to the KFF Survey of Racism, Discrimination and Health.
• Nearly half of Black adults who sought mental health care reported difficulty finding a provider who could understand their background and experiences.
• Black and Brown patients are significantly more likely to be misdiagnosed and disproportionately labeled with psychotic disorders, while depression, anxiety, and ADHD go underdiagnosed and untreated.

For many young people of color, the first "mental health intervention" they ever receive comes through the criminal legal system, not a clinic or community provider.

When the Justice System Becomes the Mental Health System

The United States has effectively made jails, prisons, and detention centers its largest providers of mental health "care," a role they were never designed for. And the numbers are staggering:

• An estimated 65 to 70% of youth held in American juvenile detention centers have a diagnosable mental illness, according to research cited by the American Bar Association.
• A congressional study found that roughly 2,000 young people are incarcerated on any given day simply because community mental health services are unavailable.
• The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that half of justice-involved youth with identifiable mental health disorders did not receive appropriate services.
• Among adults, SAMHSA estimates that 44% of people in jail and 37% of people in prison have a mental illness, compared to roughly 18% of the general population.

And because Black individuals are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, and Hispanic/Latino individuals at roughly 1.3 times the rate, these failures land hardest on the very communities already navigating the fewest resources.

The pipeline is painfully predictable. If a young person grows up amid chronic stress, community violence, economic instability, or the incarceration of a parent or family member, which the CDC recognizes as an Adverse Childhood Experience, their trauma shows up as behavior. That behavior is met with school discipline, then policing, then a courtroom. This can result in an untreated mental health need becoming a criminal record. Incarceration then compounds the original trauma, and the cycle deepens… for the individual, their family, and their community.

This is not a series of individual failures. It is a system functioning exactly as it was built. And it is why we insist that mass incarceration must be understood as a public health crisis.

What Healing-Centered Support Actually Looks Like

For nearly 50 years, AFJ has offered New York City an alternative: services instead of cells. Increasingly, mental health and wellness sit at the center of that work. Our approach includes:

• Court advocacy that ensures a young person's full story, including their mental health needs, is seen by judges and prosecutors, so that treatment and support become the outcome rather than a jail cell.
• Mental health 101 workshops, delivered in partnership with licensed clinicians, where Participants learn to recognize mental health symptoms, build coping skills, and understand the environmental and systemic factors shaping their mental health.
• Trauma-informed programming through HIRE Up, including group therapy cohorts, art and poetry therapy, and emotional wellness education woven into our workforce development and education tracks.
• Mentorship and consistent, supportive adult relationships, which research shows are among the most powerful protective factors for young people, promote healing at the neurological level.
• Connections to culturally responsive care, through partnerships with providers who understand our Participants' communities and lived experiences.

Awareness Must Lead to Investment

Minority Mental Health Awareness Month matters because naming a problem is the first step toward addressing it. But awareness alone will not close the gap between the 70% of detained youth living with mental illness and the fraction who receive meaningful care.

What closes that gap is investment: in community-based alternatives to incarceration, in culturally responsive mental health care, in safe spaces and supportive adults, and in the organizations doing this work every day in the communities most affected.

This July, we invite you to move with us from awareness to action. Learn about our programs, share this conversation, and support our work as we continue building community-rooted mental health support for the young people who need it most.