Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard recently established a bipartisan task force, called Michigan C.A.R.E.S, to work on Mental Health reform across Michigan and especially across Michigan’s Criminal Justice System.
Representative Klint Kesto (R) and Hank Vaupel (R) are the co-chairs of the task force and they have opened up an online space for public comment and also released a public meeting schedule for the task force.
While the task force has a wider mandate, my area of concern is mental health in jails and prisons (so I will limit my comments to only reforms in the area of incarceration).
I have been writing about mental health reform in Michigan’s jails and prisons for over a year now (usually using the vehicle of my recaps of the television show Orange Is the New Black). Also, I am a formerly incarcerated person.