Supporting the development of mental and emotional health in early childhood is vital to lifelong wellbeing. It helps ensure future prosperity for individuals and communities.

Individual access to health care across the lifespan builds community wellbeing. We must ensure affordable, high quality mental and physical health services are available to everyone.

Education is a key stepping stone to success in our communities. Ensuring access to supportive programs for students of all ages, and guaranteeing access to education for incarcerated citizens will yield better outcomes.

Employment helps us build meaningful lives, and is often essential for good mental health. Every community member should have a chance to do meaningful work, including those with a mental illness and those who have a criminal record.

Secure housing is a basic human need. Communities across the country provide supportive housing to those who face homelessness or struggle with physical and mental illnesses, to positive result, and at lower cost.

Every day, first responders, public safety officers, and prosecutors engage with people in mental health crisis. When health-driven behaviors result in police encounters, alternatives to arrest and criminal charges should be available.

Communities must strive to achieve justice for all, while preserving individual rights. Real justice must address and correct for inequities that exist among us because of differences in health, race, and privilege.

Our communities have the capacity and intelligence to implement proven interventions that successfully correct the behaviors of individuals in detention, and that interrupt cycles of crime.

Facing challenges in securing housing, finding work, and rebuilding their lives, people trying to return to their families and communities after serving time in the criminal justice system often face lifelong setbacks to stabilizing their lives and contributing. Housing, employment, and health care—especially for people with brain injuries and other mental health vulnerabilities—are essential first steps toward improved outcomes and cost savings.

Like policy, data can be harnessed to drive social change. In fact, data often inform policy initiatives and the successful passage of reforms. If we’re asking the right questions and questioning biases, intelligently managing data sets can help us disentangle mental health and criminal justice. Tracking data can reveal disparities and impacts, can map changes over time, and allows us to make predictions about behaviors and trends. Law enforcement agencies, health care providers, and governmental and non-governmental organizations must increasingly turn to data collection and analysis to answer questions, measure individual outcomes and experiences, improve operations, and achieve cost-savings in the context of complex systems.

In the United States, public policy reform functions as a powerful driver of social change. Policy is created through making or changing laws, and also through judicial decisions, the creation of regulatory measures by government agencies, and through funding priorities set by a lawmakers and administrators. Our public policies greatly affect the daily lives of Americans. They created mass incarceration and contribute to the disproportional representation of those with mental illnesses, people of color, and the poor in the criminal justice system. To reflect American values of liberty and justice for all, voters must actively work to influence local, state, and national policies and budgets, and get us back in alignment with our stated priorities as a nation.