May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year I find myself thinking not about what our courts cannot do for people struggling with mental illness — but about what they can.

The statistics are stark. According to NAMI, roughly two million times each year, people with serious mental illness are booked into jails. Nearly two in five incarcerated people have a history of mental illness. Closer to home, data from Albany County Mental Health Commissioner Dr. Stephen Giordano tells a striking story: as of March 2026, roughly half of all Albany County jail residents were housed in the Mental Health Unit — a proportion that has climbed as high as sixty percent in recent months. The largest de facto psychiatric institutions in this country are not hospitals. They are Rikers Island, Cook County Jail, and Los Angeles County Jail. That is not a system working as it should. But it is a problem our courts are increasingly determined to help solve.

One graduate of treatment court knows what that determination looks like. She entered the program facing eviction, addiction, and arrest — what she describes as a very dark moment. What she found was a team invested in her success. She engaged in mental health treatment, completed inpatient rehabilitation, and continued attending recovery meetings long after she was required to. She secured a new apartment, repaired family relationships, and purchased a vehicle. She graduated in October 2025. “[Treatment court] is transformative,” she has said. “It transformed my life.” Her story is not the exception. It is the point.

Problem-solving courts — mental health courts, drug treatment courts, veterans treatment courts, family treatment courts — represent one of the most meaningful shifts in American justice in decades. They pair judicial oversight with community-based treatment, addressing why someone is before the court, not just what brought them there. In the Third Judicial District, that work spans a large, largely rural region where our courts often serve as the most consistent institution in a struggling person’s life — and where our Office of Justice Initiatives programming connects people to treatment, stability, and a different path forward.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, I am proud of what our district is building. The gavel and the helping hand are not opposites. The local graduate is proof of that — and so are the judges, coordinators, and court staff who show up every day committed to both.