Recent trends in New York's mental health and criminal justice systems have led to increasing contact between acutely mentally ill people and the police. Continued downsizing of psychiatric hospitals, fragmentation and underfunding of community mental health services, and the impact of welfare reform on people with disabilities have made it increasingly difficult for New Yorkers with serious mental illnesses to access the psychiatric services they need to live in the community. At the same time that the mental health system has been turning increasing numbers of seriously mentally ill away without the help they need, recent shifts in New York City's criminal justice policies have created a declining tolerance for public disorder. Police now arrest people for public disorder offenses such as drinking in public and public urination, which in the past have warranted a reprimand, if that. The population most affected by this change in law enforcement policy has been the homeless, particularly those who, because of mental illness, act out in conspicuous ways. Increasingly, jails and prisons have replaced hospitals for mentally ill New Yorkers. The real problem is not the police, however; it is a political climate that makes it unpalatable to spend money on mental health services but desirable to build new prisons for the housing of persons whose mental illness makes their behavior a threat to public order. The rising death toll in encounters between the police and people with mental illness is only a symptom of two broader problems: the collapse of New York's mental health system and the steady expansion of the city's criminal justice system. 84 notes