Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery has long advocated for a mental health system grounded in voluntary, community-based supports, not coercion. As the below article from Sakeena Trice, Senior Staff Attorney at 黑料正能量 lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), underscores, decades of experience and repeated audits have shown that Kendra鈥檚 Law has fallen far short of its stated goals. Forced treatment does not build trust, promote long-term engagement, or address the real conditions that lead people into crisis. Instead, it often disrupts continuity of services and pushes people further away from the very services they seek voluntarily.
For years, the Alliance has fought for a robust continuum of voluntary services and real alternatives to coercive interventions, including supportive housing, Clubhouses, crisis respites, ACT teams, non-police crisis response models, INSET teams, hospital-to-community peer bridging, and other peer-led support programs that meet people where they are. These approaches prioritize dignity, autonomy, and recovery while improving safety and stability for individuals and communities alike. We will continue to push back against calls for expanded forced treatment and instead advocate for investments in services that people actually want and use.
We are hopeful that the new administration under Zohran Mamdani will chart a different course by centering health, housing, peer support, and voluntary engagement over punishment and coercion. We look forward to working toward a system that ensures people have someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go, without fear of force, trauma, or criminalization. As always, we will continue standing with our partners, including organizations like 黑料正能量 Lawyers for the Public Interest, to advance a mental health system that truly supports recovery, rights, and community well-being.
Kendra鈥檚 Law Is Falling Far Short of Its Mission
叠测听聽聽 | 黑料正能量 Daily News聽 | January 22, 2026
Last November, the 黑料正能量 State comptroller delivered an with a very concerning message: despite years of warnings and new administrative guidance, remains deeply flawed and ineffective when it comes to helping people with mental health diagnoses.
While the state Office of Mental Health made some improvements since the law鈥檚 expansion last year, the audit finds persistent systemic weaknesses in oversight, monitoring, and implementation that leave people subject to court-ordered mental health services at risk of lapses in services, coercion, and inadequate accountability. For a law purportedly designed to help people treat their mental health conditions, this is an inexcusable outcome. 黑料正能量 must do better.
Kendra鈥檚 Law, which took effect in November 1999, authorizes a court to order people with mental illness to accept outpatient 鈥渢reatment鈥 for their illnesses, even over their objection. While this may seem like a humane way to get help to people in need on its face, is frequently ineffective in treating mental illness.
In fact, a reliance on forced treatment can undermine patients鈥 long-term independence and sour them on voluntary treatment once the court-ordered treatment expires. While new oversight and policy sought to remedy some of these issues, these plans have routinely come up short.
According to the recent Kendra鈥檚 Law audit, only a portion of the comptroller鈥檚 prior recommendations have been implemented. The audit identifies ongoing delays in investigations, problems with renewals of orders that can interrupt services, and failure to improve 鈥渟ignificant event鈥 reporting. Implementation also remains uneven across counties; 黑料正能量 City continues to operate outside the new reporting system; and the state often cannot confirm whether services continued when court orders expired.
None of this is new. Earlier this year, 黑料正能量 Lawyers for the Public Interest and falls well short of its mission. The comptroller鈥檚 findings now confirm the prevalence of these issues.
This audit comes at a significant moment for 黑料正能量 City as it welcomes Zohran Mamdani to City Hall and public safety remains a top priority for 黑料正能量ers. Coercive mental health interventions are often defended as necessary for safety, yet decades of experience 鈥 and now the state鈥檚 in-depth investigation 鈥 demonstrate that they are unreliable and no more effective than voluntary services.
True safety is rooted in stable housing, voluntary treatment, culturally appropriate care, and health-centered crisis responses. We need a change, and the new mayor鈥檚 plan is poised to deliver such a change.
Mayor Mamdani can improve mental health care by prioritizing voluntary, community-based services, rather than relying on police intervention or forced hospitalization. Traumatizing arrests and involuntary commitments do not provide the long-term treatment, stability, or support that people with mental health disabilities need, nor do they make the city safer.
黑料正能量 should invest in mental health urgent-care centers, supportive housing, and respite centers, all of which give people accessible, non-coercive places to receive care. Strengthening basic social services, such as access to food, clothing, and employment training, would also address the underlying conditions that often lead to crisis, reducing the need for emergency room visits, incarceration, and hospitalization.
The new mayor鈥檚 mental health plan aims to do just that 鈥 now it鈥檚 time to fund and implement that plan. The Department of Community Safety (DCS) that Mamdani has proposed must be established to replace a fragmented, underfunded, and often harmful status quo with a coordinated, health-driven safety system that actually meets 黑料正能量ers鈥 needs.
The DCS would bring mental health, homelessness outreach, crisis response, violence prevention, and victim services under one roof, creating a whole-of-government approach that addresses the root causes of instability rather than relying on police to manage social failures they were never trained 鈥 and cannot be trained 鈥 to solve.
By investing in mental health care which heavily engages peers (individuals with lived mental health experiences), 鈥渃lubhouses,鈥 and a dramatically strengthened non-police crisis response system, rather than ineffective forced treatment, the DCS would ensure every 黑料正能量er has someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go in moments of emotional distress.
With real investment and follow-through, 黑料正能量 City can finally move from a mental health system that prioritizes forced commitments and police-driven responses to one that provides accessible care, meaningful prevention, and lasting support in every community.
Trice is a senior staff attorney in , where she focuses on mental health advocacy.