Stefen Short, an attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, lays out the case against the Mayor’s plan to involuntarily hospitalize New Yorkers suffering from mental illness in an op-ed in the New York Daily News.

“If Adams expands involuntary commitment, he will make our communities less safe, and he will do so without first piloting options that work,” Short writes. “There is no doubt that in particularly rare and severe cases, hospitalization is warranted. But hospitalization is predominantly a temporary intervention that traumatizes patients and minimizes their prospects for long-term recovery.”

“When patients are discharged from hospitalization, they are discharged into a city without housing and services and placed right back on the pipeline to future hospitalization,” he continued. “This cycle must end.”

Read the full piece here.