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Tavis: Judge Wendy Lindley is a superior court judge here in Orange County, California, who's developed a reputation for creative sentencing and community outreach, all designed to reduce recidivism and save the state money. She is the driving force behind a new program set to debut next year that will provide a host of support services all under one roof to those who most frequently find themselves in her court. Judge Lindley, nice to have you on the program.

Judge Wendy Lindley: Thank you so much. It's a thrill to be here.

Tavis: Glad to have you. I tried in the setup to explain what this concept is like. Before I talk more about the concept and how it might work and if in fact it can work, tell me what brought you to this point of trying to figure out a way to put all of these services under one roof?

Lindley: Well, I started out on my career as a prosecutor in a district attorney's office, and I rapidly noticed--actually, within a week--that I felt I was part of the problem rather than solving the problem because I was seeing the same individuals I had prosecuted and sent to jail coming back. So that caused me to look into the concept called drug court, which actually started in 1989. Janet Reno started that in Florida, and we've been doing that in Orange County for many years and have had fantastic results. It's a very tough program involving strict accountability, responsibility, assisting people with counseling, getting jobs, continuing their education if they had not yet gotten a high school degree, and so on. And as a result of the wonderful statistics that we had with that program, people turning their lives around, becoming good parents and contributors, we decided that we should be doing more outreach to other populations, and that's when we became interested in the mentally ill.

As I'm sure you're aware, we're filling our state prisons and jails with the mentally ill, and it's a inhumane way to treat these individuals who are there through no fault of their own. So for the past 2 years I've been involved in a outreach program for the mentally ill assisting them in getting stabilized, turning their lives around. And as a result, we've realized there are so many ancillary services that we would like to have available, and that's why we're going to put it all in one location, all in one spot, so that they can have the help that they need with housing, with food, with employment, with psychiatric assistance, with counseling, and all those other things that they need to turn their lives around and get stable.

Tavis: I want to ask you what the barriers have been heretofore, aside from the fact that no one was creative enough to figure it out. Have there been barriers before that kept this one-stop idea from actually coming to fruition? But before I ask that question, I want to back up first and ask you to give me some assessment of how bad the problem of mental illness is in our prisons. We know about the drug crisis--you mentioned that a moment ago. We know that because of the war on drugs, the so-called war on drugs, that we're filling our prisons with persons who abuse drugs, but how bad is the mental illness problem?

Lindley: You know, I think it's terrible. There are different statistics, and I've heard statistics that from as much as 20 percent of our inmates suffer from serious mental illness. But remember that is chronic persistent mental illness, and many other individuals suffer from a lower level of mental illness that affects their ability to stay clean and sober and to follow through with the demands of the court or the requests of the court. And I think that at this point in time as a society we need to take a new look at how we're treating these individuals and quit putting them in prison and in jail and treat them from a whole another perspective to prevent them going into prison or jail.

Tavis: If this idea is such a good idea why has it not taken root before now, you think?

Lindley: You know, I really can't answer that. I think that for many years we did at one time have a system of care for the mentally ill in California, as you know, and I'm sure in other states as well. But when economic times get tough it seems like the mentally ill are at the bottom of the barrel because they don't have a constituency, really, that can stand up for them in the way that needs to occur for them to get their needs met. Imagine if you're a schizophrenic individual that's hearing voices, 3 different voices in your head simultaneously, how are you supposed to follow through with what the court wants you to do, get on a bus, and go report somewhere? It's virtually impossible. So it's no wonder that they fail and then end up in prison or jail. They simply can't follow through.

Tavis: Pragmatically, tell me how this in a fiduciary way saves the state money by putting all these operations under one roof?

Lindley: The way it saves money is that previously, in trying to get people to go to various locations and follow through with what they were requested to do, they would fail, and as a result then they would be re-arrested, warrants would go out, all that would cost money. They'd come into the courts and go off wherever they were going. By really taking a more holistic approach and looking at having all the agencies there interacting for the benefit of a client, we are going to see more success. There will be a huge savings from that. It's already been distributed with the drug courts. As you may know for every $1.00 spent in a drug court type program, nationally, $7.00 to $10 are saved on that individual. This is the same type of program, only it even has an increase in the services. So I would expect to see an even greater savings for this kind of program.

Tavis: I've often said with regard to California politics that what happens here in the Golden State either casts a long shadow or a long sunbeam across the country. We try so many things first. We initiate so many things here in California. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but it either casts a shadow or a sunbeam across the country. I raise that because I wonder what the likelihood is that other states around the country, other jurisdictions, will start to use this idea, to emulate this idea if it works, but it seems to me that that will only happen if we can get people to start in a significant way to care about this constituency that you referenced earlier that doesn't have folk who fight for us, so how do we first get people to see this as a problem that they ought to care about fixing, much less care about, period.

Lindley: Well, first, I want to tell you there are other courts that are having similar kinds of approaches around the country, nothing as comprehensive as this, but it is starting. And secondly, let me just tell you a short story about one of my graduates.

A gentleman had been homeless for 20 years, and this gentleman came into our program. He was schizophrenic, we got him stabilized on medication, which he'll have to take the rest of his life. He has a place to live, he does a little bit of volunteer work, and he's really doing well. He ended up relapsing. He came back to visit me. He wasn't arrested or anything, but he said that he went back and hung out with some of the old people he had used drugs with, he used drugs, he went back to his self-help meetings, AA, NA, and CA. And he went back to the place where he was living, informed them. He came in to see me and said, 'I was able'--this is him telling me...'I was able to use the tools, the tools that you gave me when I was in your program and get back on track again,' and then he looked at me and said, 'I want to thank you for giving me my life.' And when you look at those people that walk around on the streets, those homeless people that you see talking to themselves, pulling their shopping cart or whatever they have, you look at those humans and you know in your heart, they never said when they were little kids, 'I wanted to grow up to be schizophrenic, I wanted to grow up to be bi-polar, I wanted to grow up to have major depressive disorder.' These are human beings. There but for the grace of God could go you or I or anyone else and they deserve better. They deserve to have us offer them the best that we have and this court will be the best that we have because every agency will be there holding hands to help this person have a life.

Tavis: I think in any major city in this country, not just major cities, even in small towns, you cannot drive around these days and not see these persons walking around, talking to themselves, begging for money, et cetera, that you referenced a moment ago and yet, while we see this in front of us every day, maybe you have a different sense--I don't get the sense that the issue of homelessness and mental illness is as high on the American agenda now as it was even 10-15 years ago. It's not being talked about. I didn't hear Bush or Kerry talk about homelessness or mental illness one time to my recollection in the entire presidential campaign.

Lindley: Well, I'll tell you something, it's something they should be talking about because about 30% of our homeless in this nation are veterans. Can you imagine? Can you imagine, out on those streets, those gentlemen that you see out there, they're veterans. They served this country and they're homeless and if they aren't talking about it, they need to start talking about it because it's really a disgrace.

Tavis: What do you think we most miss? What are we not getting about the need for addressing this problem now? I'm just trying to juxtapose how it is we see the problem, but don't have the wherewithal to actually fix the problem. The government is we, the people. If we care about this, if we talk about this, if we raise this issue, if we support programs like yours, eventually, the problem gets solved, so what's missing here to connect these 2 things up?

Lindley: Well, you know, that's an interesting thought. One of the beauties of the program that we are doing is that it's coming from the streets. One of our partners is law enforcement and we actually have some law enforcement officers who have been specially trained in working with people that have chronic persistence of mental illness. And one of the programs in the new court that we're doing is we're calling it frequent flyer, or high utilization, program, where our law enforcement officers have a lot of contact with these individuals and instead of arresting them, putting them into custody, they'll be referring them to our special court, so we'll be able to help the homeless and the mentally ill that they are dealing with frequently.

Tavis: It is an innovative idea, an innovative program and one of the sponsors behind it, the brainchild in fact, is Judge Wendy Lindley of the Orange County Superior Court system out here in California. Judge, nice to have you on the program. All the best to you. I hope it does work and I hope when it does work, that other people around the country will start to emulate the program.

Lindley: Thank you, Tavis. I'm sure it will work.

Tavis: Nice to have you on the program. Glad to have you. Up next on this program, director Jay Roach. Stay with us. We're back in a moment.