The county district attorney’s office and law enforcement professionals from across the state are urging California residents to contact their elected state assembly member and state senator to pass assembly bill 46.
Assembly bill 46 “closes dangerous loopholes” in the penal code “by restoring judges discretion to deny diversion to violent and high-risk offenders while ensuring meaningful treatment for those who truly suffer from mental illness.”
Mental health diversion under penal code section 1001.36, according to the DA’s office, was intended to offer treatment instead of incarceration to individuals whose mental illness significantly contributed to their behavior. However, limitations now require judges to grant diversion once certain criteria are met, “even in serious and violent cases.”
AB 46, according to the DA’s office, would allow courts to consider whether a defendant poses a substantial and undue risk, and whether treatment is clinically appropriate.
