Florida will have to spend an estimated $3.6 billion to build new prisons if the number of people with mental illness behind bars keeps growing as fast as it has, a South Florida judge said Wednesday. ‘It’s madness,’ said Steve Leifman, a Miami-Dade County judge who serves as special adviser on criminal justice and mental health to the Florida Supreme Court. ‘The state can’t afford to keep doing it this way.’ The state’s treatment of people with mental illness earned a D on a national advocacy group’s report card Wednesday, down from a C three years ago. Florida has one of the largest uninsured populations in the nation, 3.7 million, but the state is falling behind, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness ‘Grading the States’ 2009 report. Leifman supports a state Senate bill to rechannel existing resources to community-based programs. These would be designed to provide more effective treatment for mentally ill people who commit relatively minor crimes – not just stabilize them for court appearances. The number of Floridians with mental illness in prison has grown 145 percent to 17,000 in the past 10 years, he said. A commission has been […]