At CASES, we work every day to safely keep people out of jail and in their communities through evidence-based programs that prioritize care over punishment. Our clinic and mobile mental health teams, court-based programs, and education and employment initiatives succeed by building trust with our clients and providing voluntary services in the community. We believe everyone deserves the chance to heal, grow and build a life of opportunity and purpose.
Last week’s Executive Order doubles down on outdated and ineffective responses to homelessness, mental illness and substance use. As an organization serving thousands of New Yorkers who are vulnerable to incarceration and involuntary commitment, we know this approach will not make our communities safer. If implemented, the Order will increase incarceration and homelessness, overwhelm hospitals, and erode trust in the very systems meant to support recovery and stability.
This executive action expands law enforcement surveillance of people with mental illness, promotes the use of involuntary hospitalization and calls for increased arrests of people experiencing homelessness. It threatens funding for programs like our Nathaniel Assertive Community Treatment Program, an alternative to incarceration for people with serious mental illness that is proven to reduce both homelessness and hospitalizations by over 50%.
Involuntary hospitalization and incarceration are among the least effective and most expensive responses to behavioral health needs. Every dollar spent this way is a dollar not spent on affordable housing, education, public transit, and local economic development—the very services that prevent homelessness and improve quality of life. CASES mobile psychiatric treatment programs cost a small fraction of the cost of a bed at Rikers Island or Bellevue, with much better results. We believe that the focus should be on fully funding voluntary, community-based care—proven approaches that too often have long waitlists, limited capacity and over-stretched staff. In other words, we must ensure people have real opportunities to get help in ways that actually work.
Criminalizing our clients only worsens their mental health, unnecessarily disrupts their lives, and ultimately undermines public safety instead of improving it. We urge city, state and federal leaders to reject the framework of this Executive Order and instead commit to scaling up the services that work. We cannot arrest, hospitalize or surveil our way out of homelessness. Now is not the time for a return to mass incarceration and forced institutionalization. What is called for is compassionate, humane and cost-effective solutions like those offered by CASES and our partners.
