People with mental illnesses in the United States are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized. In fact, seventy percent of individuals in jail in the United States have a serious mental illness, a substance use disorder, or both. After confronting the failures of our criminal justice system first-hand, Miami-Dade County (Florida) Judge Steven Leifman realized that for the system to improve, a radical change was necessary. In 2000, he created Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project, later renamed to the Jail Diversion Project (JDP), which has since become the most impactful model for prison reform in the country and garnered international accolades.

Complete Justice reveals Judge Leifman’s courageous and visionary efforts to successfully overhaul and restructure Miami-Dade’s mental health and criminal justice systems. The results were nothing short of miraculous. Arrests were cut in half, the jail audit was reduced by almost half, police shootings almost stopped, and the county was able to close one of its three main jails at a savings of millions of dollars. Best of all, his results are replicable and scalable. Leifman has created a state-of-the-art, transferable model, the “Miami Model,” that is starting to be applied around the country in communities large and small. This highly successful initiative, consisting of both pre-arrest and post-arrest diversion programs, brings together the resources and services of law enforcement, the justice system, and community stakeholders to divert individuals with mental illnesses who commit low-level offenses away from incarceration and into community-based care.

Starting with a trip to a psychiatric wing of a Florida jail at age 17, through his early missteps as a young judge bumping up against convoluted the mental health legislature, the formation of the JDP and monumental report on Florida’s mental health system, and finally spotlighting courts across the country adopting his program, Leifman’s inspiring work offers kindness, insight, and real solutions to one of America’s most complex social problems.