If Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and the General Assembly are serious about criminal-justice reform, they need to do something this session about the continued imprisonment of Christopher Sharikas.

Sharikas was 15 years old and living in Northern Virginia when he began exhibiting signs of having a serious mental illness. He began hearing voices, became disruptive at school and armed himself with a baseball bat. He was ultimately diagnosed with untreated paranoid schizophrenia.

In April 1997, about a year after he was diagnosed, he flashed a knife at a woman who had refused to give him money, before he ran away. The police interviewed him the following day but declined to arrest him. Later that afternoon, Sharikas approached a woman and demanded her car keys. Voices were telling him that he needed to drive to New York. She surrendered her keys and purse, but Sharikas stabbed her from behind, puncturing her liver.