What would a Miami-Dade judge know about Spokane’s homelessness crisis? A lot, local leaders believe

After three decades presiding over a Miami-Dade County courtroom, a meteoric rise as a criminal justice advocate and international recognition from the late Pope Francis, Judge Steven Leifman has turned his focus on Spokane County.

The Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force, a public-private partnership hoping to run a tax measure to fund a revamp of the regional criminal justice system, has tapped the decorated former judge to serve as a consultant.

“He’s a very high-quality, high-caliber consultant,” said Spokane County Superior Court Judge Tony Hazel. “… One thing I really like about Judge Leifman is he brings evidence-based practices and best practices that have been vetted and screened with data across the country. It’s not just him, as a source.”

Leifman met with the task force behind closed doors for its second assembly at a CHAS Health building in Spokane late last month. The meeting comes as the group eyes an impending regional overhaul, and amid increasing pressure on local governments to better respond to homelessness, safety concerns in downtown Spokane and the region’s inability to match pace with national peers in overcoming the opioid epidemic.

Meeting the community’s needs will require collaboration, a concentration of political will and “multitudes of systems coming together,” said Greater Spokane Incorporated CEO Alisha Benson.

“Most people really want to fix it,” Leifman said in an interview following the meeting. “They either are just too busy in their daily lives to do it or don’t know how. But there’s so much research out there today that show us how to do it, that there’s no reason that we’re not all doing it.”

Leifman was one of the main subjects of the 2020 PBS documentary “The Definition of Insanity,” which details his life’s work to overhaul the criminal justice system in the U.S. to better serve those with mental illness. Leifman is likely best known for helping to implement the Criminal Mental Health Project in Miami-Dade County where he served as an associate administrative judge prior to his retirement last year. He now serves as president and founder of a consulting firm, the Leifman Group.

Those working in social services, public safety and local government often talk about the success seen in Houston, in addressing homelessness. Right up alongside Houston, and often in the same conversation, is Leifman’s brainchild commonly referred to as the “ Miami Model.”

Launched in 2000, the diversion program offers nonviolent misdemeanor and felony defendants with mental illnesses a path to treatment and support services, instead of cycling them through the criminal justice system as often happens, Leifman said.

Police training is another key tenet of the program, Leifman said. The courts in Miami Dade oversee a 40-hour program that teaches law enforcement how to identify someone in crisis, how to de-escalate and where to take them, as opposed to arresting. More than 8,500 officers have completed the program over the past decade, Leifman said.

“My focus over the last 25 years has been to work with the population that has severe and persistent, what we call serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders, that continuously cycle between all the acute systems of care,” Leifman said, “which include homelessness, jail, competency restoration and hospitalization.”

Those systems can become overburdened, and those at the heart of the cycle often are not lent a handout, only exacerbating the strain on the individual and the first responders, hospitals, shelters and court systems involved, Leifman said.

“You can’t solve it by pushing everybody through the criminal justice system,” Leifman said. “It’s enormously expensive this way, it is enormously ineffective, and the long-term impact of doing it this way is a disaster.”

The criminal justice system often becomes a catch-all for those with mental illness, homelessness and addiction, Leifman said.

“You end up adjudicating and giving criminal records to people that really don’t need one, which then makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to get housing, and it makes it very difficult or impossible for them to get employed,” Leifman said.

And there’s another part people often don’t think about, he said.

“It makes them better criminals,” he added. “They end up associating with real criminals who take full advantage of them and use them to commit crimes in your community.”

It’s not a soft-on-crime approach, Leifman said. Most offenders are out of jail relatively soon, he said, and often wind up back in the criminal justice system shortly after. Recidivism goes down tremendously when the right diversions and treatment services are in place, he said.

“So we either can release people with treatment or without treatment,” Leifman argued. “And when you release people without treatment, there is a pretty much 100% chance of coming back.”

In the decades since the program was launched in Miami-Dade County, the number of arrests fell from 118,000 a year to 53,000, according to a 2023 report from the National Judicial College. The jail population also fell by almost 50%, from 7,400 to 4,400.

The county was able to close one of its three jails, leading to $168 million in taxpayer savings “that the county is doing a good job of reinvesting,” Leifman said.

Overcrowding is a perennial concern at the Spokane County Jail, particularly in the busiest summer months. It was a main selling point of the failed 2023 jail tax measure that would have generated an estimated $1.7 billion over 30 years to build two new detention facilities and fund criminal justice and treatment services investments.

Local leaders often point to the growing frequency and durations of “red-light status” periods at the Spokane County Jail to explain the capacity issues. The alert is triggered when bookings back up, which means newly arrested offenders cannot be processed and local law enforcement are stuck waiting outside.

As of Friday, the jail entered “red-light status” 15 times in the last 30 days for a total of 18 hours, according to a capacity dashboard providing public data on the jail launched by Spokane County earlier this year.

Leifman is a proponent of mandated care, or using the courts to ensure early intervention and treatment for those with mental illnesses and addictions instead of jail cells. Last year he was in Italy and was able to observe the town of Trieste’s model of mental health care.

“Think of this like any other illness: If you had a heart attack, we wouldn’t run to court to get a judge to decide if we should get your heart pumping again, and if you’re unconscious, we involuntarily treat you,” Leifman said. “In fact, we may even operate and cut your chest open against your will, but we save you, right?”

Taking the analogy farther, Leifman said best medical practices would then send that patient into additional recovery, like a cardiac rehabilitation center, or a few more nights in the hospital, to ensure they’re “ready to go home.”

“Heck, we do a better job if you have a hip replacement,” he added.

The World Health Organization designated the community-based Trieste approach one of the most advanced, successful models in the world. The program boasts wrap-around services in day-to-day settings, rather than detention facilities or hospitals, and incorporates employment, education and volunteer opportunities to give a greater sense of dignity and belonging.

“We intervene late,” Leifman said. “We do it the exact opposite, and it forces us then to use jail, prison, competency restoration and hospitalization as the main responses, which are the four most expensive ways to do this.”

Leifman sees a lot of potential in Spokane. The programs and facilities already in place provide a strong foundation to build upon, and there are few communities with the “great political will” and “open-mindedness” to improve those systems, he said.

He pointed to co-responder programs that partner mental health professionals and social workers with first responders in Spokane, Spokane Valley and the broader county, as well as ongoing investments in treatment facilities like Maddie’s Place, Spokane Compassionate Addiction and Recovery Services and the Spokane Regional Crisis and Stabilization Center already in development.

The challenges he’s identified revolve mainly around what he calls “care coordination.” Some of those co-responder programs are not available 24/7, elements of the criminal justice system can be siloed and there needs to be better discharge planning when it comes to releases from the jail or local hospitals.

Still, Spokane already has a leg up on addressing its challenges compared to most municipalities, Leifman said.

“If it’s already existing, like it exists here, then we have a much better opportunity to fix this much more quickly and much more effectively,” Leifman said.