It’s only natural to scour Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed CARE Courts plan for enough redeeming features to make it worthwhile. Californians are desperate for solutions to help people struggling with debilitating mental illness because the state has failed utterly to provide sufficient mental health care. Cities have tried criminalizing the homelessness that can be a result of severe mental illness, and some lawmakers have tried to more easily compel mentally ill people into treatment — anything but make the necessary investment in housing, treatment and care.
But the Community Assistance Recovery and Empowerment Court, and the accompanying Senate Bill 1338, merely create a new legal framework for the same failed approach, making mental illness tantamount to a crime. A veneer of voluntariness — civil courts instead of criminal, “supported decision-making” before outright compulsion — is meant to make the program more palatable. But the only real step forward is Newsom’s separate but related commitment to fund thousands of affordable housing units, some of which counties could use to bolster their slim stock of supportive housing. California needs much more of that — plus many more dedicated permanent supportive housing units — and fewer policy mirages.
Under the CARE Court proposal, a person with specified serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia could petition a court for entry into a county care program. But it is presumed that few patients will choose to act on their own behalf and that most entries will be initiated by people the new law would authorize to act, supposedly on their behalf. Those people include police officers, regardless of whether the subjects of their petitions are suspected of committing any crime (counties, care providers and family members are also among those who could petition).
