The Honorable Debra Hembree Lambert

Chief Justice Debra Hembree Lambert has been a driving force for improving court responses to people with behavioral health needs for many years. Through her vision and compassion, she has positioned Kentucky as a national leader in judicially-driven behavioral health reform. An early champion of Kentucky’s Drug Court program, Chief Justice Lambert has long promoted treatment-focused alternatives to incarceration or foster care. In 2022, she established the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health (KJCMH), a first-of-its-kind initiative helping to expand responses to mental health needs and improve competency processes. Under her guidance, KJCMH has aligned its work with resolutions passed by The Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators to improve the justice system’s response to people with serious mental illness. She also helped expand court-based behavioral health liaison positions and mental health courts and secure legislation such as Seth’s Law, which addressed competency evaluation backlogs.