FINDINGS.

SEC. 2. [42 U.S.C. 3797aa note] FINDINGS. Congress finds the following: (1) Communities nationwide are struggling to respond to the high numbers of people with mental illnesses involved at all points in the criminal justice system. (2) A 1999 study by the Department of Justice estimated that 16 percent of people incarcerated in prisons and jails in the United States, which is more than 300,000 people, suffer from mental illnesses. (3) Los Angeles County Jail and New York’s Rikers Island jail complex hold more people with mental illnesses than the largest psychiatric inpatient facilities in the United States. (4) State prisoners with a mental health problem are twice as likely as those without a mental health problem to have been homeless in the year before their arrest.