I have spent years advocating for people with serious mental illness and for a system that treats illness as illness — not as a crime. That is precisely why I support the effort to build a new jail and sheriff’s office.

My support is not an endorsement of mass incarceration, nor is it an admission that jail is an appropriate substitute for a hospital, a crisis center, supportive housing, or community-based treatment. It is a recognition of the reality we face today: people will continue to enter the criminal legal system, including people experiencing psychosis, severe depression, bipolar disorder, and other disabling conditions. When they do, the building and the practices inside it can either deepen their trauma or protect their dignity and safety.

An inadequate jail is not merely inconvenient. Poor sightlines, unsafe cells, overcrowding, excessive noise, limited clinical space, and a lack of appropriate areas for assessment and stabilization can be dangerous for everyone — incarcerated people, jail staff, health professionals, and visitors. These conditions are especially harmful to people whose symptoms may make them frightened, confused, suicidal, or unable to follow instructions.

A responsibly designed facility can create safer spaces for intake, mental-health screening, medical care, de-escalation, observation, family and attorney visits, and discharge planning. A modern sheriff’s office can also improve coordination among deputies, clinicians, courts, hospitals, crisis services, and community providers. The goal should be more timely treatment and better transitions back into the community.

Just as importantly, we need to continue investing in ways to keep people out of jail in the first place. Crisis response teams, treatment courts, assisted outpatient treatment, pretrial diversion, supportive housing, peer support, mobile crisis services, and accessible outpatient treatment can prevent a health crisis from becoming a criminal case. Supporting a safer jail does not require choosing it over these services. We need both humane custody for those who are detained and strong alternatives so fewer people are detained. As I often say in my advocacy work, the choices are not either/or; they are both/and.

Some may see support for a new jail and advocacy for people with serious mental illness as contradictory. I do not. Advocacy requires us to confront the world as it is while simultaneously working toward the world as it should be. We should build fewer pathways into jail, more pathways into treatment, and — when custody cannot be avoided — a facility that is safe, accountable, and humane.

We can insist on public safety without abandoning compassion. We can support law enforcement without asking deputies to serve as mental-health professionals in a building that works against them. And we can approve a new jail and sheriff’s office while demanding that every policy, room, and public dollar reflect the dignity of the people who will enter its doors. That is not a retreat from mental-health advocacy. It is an essential part of it.

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