Stephanie Rolin - Between Care and Custody

How Stephanie Rolin, MD ’14, MPH ’08, is reshaping the space where mental health and the legal system collide.

When Stephanie Rolin moved to the United States from Belgium as a child, she brought with her a simple truth: You don’t punish people for being sick.  

Years later, as Rolin established herself as a physician, public health expert, and forensic psychiatrist, she discovered just how radical this childhood insight really was. She came to realize that the American healthcare system had developed an elaborate architecture for doing precisely what her childhood self had found unthinkable. In courtrooms, judges sentenced the mentally ill to prison instead of treatment. In emergency rooms, psychiatric patients shuttled between police custody and medical care, while in county jails, people cycled through cells instead of therapy.  

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