Alliance Alert: This Tuesday, an opinion piece written by Ibrahim Ayu highlighted why all New York must pass the Treatment Not Jail (TNJ) legislation on the same day the TNJ campaign held the first advocacy day of the year in Albany. Passing the TNJ legislation is essential to ensure people are diverted away from incarceration and connected to the effective support they need to thrive.
Ibrahim’s story exemplifies how forced treatment policies can create additional fear for people experiencing a crisis which prevents them from engaging with outreach and support services. The fear of losing autonomy through forced hospitalization pushes individuals further away from care instead of fostering trust and connection. To create meaningful change, New York must address the root causes of its mental health crisis: decades of chronic underfunding of the community mental health system, a severe lack of affordable housing, rising poverty, and systemic discrimination against marginalized communities that leads to over policing and disproportionate incarceration.
We need to build a system that works. This starts with improving access to housing and comprehensive mental health services, ensuring that people stop cycling in and out of jails, prisons, and hospitals without receiving adequate long-term support. Ibrahim’s story underscores the dangers of a siloed system, where people often fall through the cracks, and the harm caused by crisis responders who lack proper training in mental health.
At the same time, his journey demonstrates the incredible potential for recovery when individuals are connected with the appropriate services and care team. By passing the Treatment Not Jail Act, New York can prioritize recovery, reduce recidivism, and address the systemic issues at the heart of this crisis. Let’s invest in solutions that offer dignity, stability, and real support for our communities. See below to read Ibrahim’s piece.
Opinion: We’ll Never Address NYC’s Mental Health Crisis Until We Stop Funneling People to Jails & Prisons
By Ibrahim Ayu | City Limits | January 21, 2025
“There is no comprehensive network of treatment courts in New York, and those that do exist are woefully underutilized. Far more people should be getting the genuine care and treatment that I got.”
As New Yorkers begin a long-overdue reckoning of our collective failure on mental health policy, I share my story, painful as it is, to offer a window of hope and a path forward.
My name is Ibrahim Ayu. I am a community activist, attorney, music and film producer, and poet. I am also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. After my mother suffered a stroke in 2021, I cycled for years through the revolving door of incarceration, hospitalization, criminalization, and homelessness. This cruel cycle finally broke last year, when I was connected with a little-known, widely underutilized program that changed my life: mental health court.
This story begins in 2023, when I was arrested in a homeless shelter in Manhattan. At the time, due to systemic bureaucratic failures, I had been without mental health treatment, including prescription medications, for three weeks. To put it simply: I was in crisis.
I got into an argument with shelter staff, and police were called. When they arrived, things escalated quickly. Officers referred to my mental illness in hurtful terms, and kept threatening to civilly commit me, a trigger for me after enduring the trauma of involuntary hospitalization years earlier. I was accused of injuring an officer who arrested me that day, and was charged with felony assault, punishable by seven years in prison.
For the next few months, I was held in pre-trial detention at Rikers, where things spiraled dramatically. In addition to not receiving my prescribed psychiatric medications, I also was unable to access insulin to treat my diabetes. Eventually, I had to have emergency treatment on my foot to prevent it from being amputated. This was the lowest point in my life.
Finally, my legal team miraculously got me admitted into the Manhattan Misdemeanor Mental Health Court. This is where my fortunes changed.
Mental health courts seek to divert people from the normal, carceral channels of the criminal legal system by identifying and treating the root causes that drive criminal behavior in the first place. These specialized court programs are staffed with specially trained judges, clinicians, and peers, who work together to develop a comprehensive treatment plan to help the person stabilize and heal.
And that is what they did for me. Together, with my legal team and the angels at the Center for Justice Innovation, which provides the clinical care and case management staffing, we developed a comprehensive treatment plan that addressed my housing instability, my unemployment, and of course, my poorly treated mental health.
In March last year, I graduated. By that point, I had secured a beautiful supportive housing apartment in the Bronx, started a stable desk job at a municipal agency, and embarked on an excellent mental health and wellness regimen.
Nearly one year later, I am thriving. In September, I was named one of the 10 best probation clients in the city. In my spare time, I have reconnected with my creative pursuits. I published a book of poetry and have been working as a film and music producer.
Most importantly, I have found a new purpose in helping others access the same life-changing opportunity that I got. Treatment Not Jail (TNJ) is a proposed bill looking to expand access across the state to the same mental health courts that saved me. There is no comprehensive network of treatment courts in New York, and those that do exist are woefully underutilized. Far more people should be getting the genuine care and treatment that I got.
I know firsthand that incarceration does not make our streets safer. Let my story be the proof: with the right care, anyone can get better. Providing treatment and services to those who need it most is vital to creating the thriving, healthy, safe communities we all want.
As I write in my book, Silent Sufferers: Poems & Stories:
For every saint had a past, just like you and me,
And every sinner has a future, waiting to be free.
Just like you and me, souls shining like jewelry
So, let’s enjoy these poems, silent sufferers in this dance,
Finding solace and strength, giving suffering a chance.
Ibrahim Ayu is a community activist, poet, attorney, and music and film producer based in the Bronx.