Steven Leifman subject of new PBS documentary

Abstract

Judge Steven Leifman, who began the Miami‐Dade County Criminal Mental Health Project, is the focus of a new documentary on PBS, The Definition of Insanity, TV News Desk reported April 9. The documentary explores the groundbreaking work of the Miami‐Dade Criminal Mental Health Project (CMHP), an approach being heralded as a model for helping to solve the mental health crisis in America. A people‐powered communitywide safety net, the CMHP works through the court system to steer people with mental illness — as their legal cases hang in the balance — on a path from incarceration to recovery. Shocked by how people with mental illness were treated in Miami‐Dade's jails, Leifman works with a team of dedicated public servants, as well as former adversaries in the criminal justice system, to help people with mental illness navigate from lives of tragedy to possibility. Building on the story of Miami's once‐failed mental health system — a familiar national narrative of over‐incarceration and brutal mistreatment — The Definition of Insanity instead reveals a humane criminal justice approach to mental illness that is orchestrated from the court outward into the community. The Definition of Insanity premiered on PBS April 14.