To Milton Mack, Jr., probate court is not just a place to settle estates -- it's truly another kind of problem-solving court.
"Probate court created the opportunity to be a problem solver on a daily basis, which is what I enjoy doing," explained the former chief judge of the Wayne County Probate Court.
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| Mack in his office at the Michigan Hall of Justice |
“There’s no excuse for 24 percent of our prison inmates having a serious mental illness,” exclaimed Mack. “There’s no excuse for having more people with mental illness in prison than in hospitals.
Mack, who currently serves on the state’s Mental Health Diversion Council, says that his passion for mental health reform stemmed from his frustration as a probate judge for more than 25 years with people coming in and not getting any better under the system.
“I could also see that more and more of the work we did in handling people with mental illness was going over to the criminal justice side. It struck me that, ‘We have a civil justice side already, so why isn’t that working?’” remarked Mack.
“I watched as more people were getting into the criminal justice system and ending up in prison, so I’ve been an advocate of change for a long time, which is what ultimately led to my appointment to the Mental Health Commission in 2004,” he continued. “That was a great experience in the sense that we were able to put our arms around the issue and develop a proposal that outlined a new mission, vision, and goals for the states mental health system.
“The issues I raised about the mental health system led to the change in ‘Kevin’s Law,’ to make it work better,” said Mack. “Actually, to make it work, period, because it didn’t work at all before.”
“Kevin’s Law” took effect in 2005 and was named after Kevin Heisinger who was beaten to death by a schizophrenic patient not taking his medication. Mack said that the intention behind Kevin’s Law was for the court to intervene early in someone's mental illness before they got in trouble and to hopefully get them outpatient treatment so they would not have to be hospitalized.
“It is a great idea, but the problem was that as writ- ten, you weren’t allowed to intervene early, number one, and number two, there wasn’t a system to provide the service, so it wasn’t working at all,” explained Mack.
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| Mack presenting his policy paper to the Arizona judiciary in 2017 |
The paper went through a series of committee meetings and was reviewed by NCSC, as well as state court administrators around the country. His paper received national recognition at the COSCA Conference in the fall of 2017, as well as news coverage across Michigan.
“I’m very pleased with the way it turned out and it was approved by the conference of State Court Administrators this past December and it was recently approved by the Conference of Chief Justices—all unanimously,” said Mack. “This will be a blueprint for going forward around the country on how to start fixing the mental health system.”
One point he makes in the paper is that the mental health system must intervene early in the course of someone’s mental illness to keep their behavior under control, so they do not end up in prison.
“Even today, despite the fact that Michigan is doing a great job in expanding mental health courts, the number of people with serious mental illness going to prison is still increasing and we have to stop that,” said Mack. “I won’t be satisfied until we reverse that trend. We have not done it yet. The reforms we are proposing are designed to help reverse that trend.”
For instance, Mack believes we should have a strong outpatient treatment system that is community based and provides care for people in a timely fashion.
“We know that mental illness is treatable, recovery is possible, and many people with mental illness can live productive lives,” said Mack. “But the important feature is timely treatment for mental illness. If you treated cancer like we treat mental illness then we wouldn’t build more treatment facilities, we’d build more hospice facilities.”
“It’s just incredible to me that we have chosen to delay treatment for mental illness knowing the harm it causes,” said Mack. “We wouldn’t do this for any other illness.”
Mack praised the work of the Mental Health Diversion Council in addressing these issues, and in particular, the contributions of Kalamazoo County Probate Court Chief Judge Curtis J. Bell, Jr, who also serves on the Diversion Council.
“Judge Bell has been an outstanding leader on this issue,” said Mack. “He has run most of the ad hoc committees we’ve set up that do the real work of the commission. He’s able to bring people together; I really appreciated his leadership style. Some of us can become a little aggressive in the positions we take, but Judge Bell always remains cool, calm, and collected, and helps guide us to a decision.”
Most recently, Judge Bell testified before the House Judiciary Committee in Lansing in support of legislation that would establish a specific juvenile mental health court.
Today, Mack is optimistic that through his policy paper “blueprint” and the work of the Diversion Council, the Michigan Mental Health Code will be reformed, which he says has been the main obstacles to getting treatment.“
That won’t solve the entire problem because one of the big problems is the lack of resources,” he explained. “But the first thing we want to do is get rid of the obstacle. Once that happens, it will lay the groundwork toward making further long-term changes that are needed.”
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| Mack (standing, center) at the bill signing for legislation amending "Kevin's Law" in 2017 |