Mental health courts
Encyclopedia
Mental health courts link offenders who would ordinarily be prison-bound to long-term community-based treatment. They rely on mental health assessments, individualized treatment plans, and ongoing judicial monitoring to address both the mental health needs of offenders and public safety concerns of communities. Like other problem-solving courts, such as drug court
s, domestic violence court
s, and community court
s, mental health courts seek to address the underlying problems that contribute to criminal behavior.
Mental health courts share characteristics with Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), jail diversion programs, specialized probation
and parole
caseloads, and a host of other collaborative initiatives intended to address the significant overrepresentation of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
In addition to arranging inpatient treatment, Judge Goodman often put defendants on diversion, or on an outpatient commitment, and ordered them into outpatient treatment. Judge Goodman would have periodic hearings to determine the patient's compliance with the treatment plan. Patients who did not follow the treatment plan faced sanctions, a modification of the plan, or if they were on diversion their original charge could be set for trial.
Judge Goodman's concept and the original mental health court were dissolved in the early 1990s.
In the mid-1990s, many of the professional mental health workers who had worked with Judge Goodman sought to re-establish a mental health court in Indianapolis. Representatives of the county's mental health service providers and other stake holders began meeting weekly. The group decided to accept the name of the PAIR Program [PAIR stood for Psychiatric Assertive Identification and Referral]. After, a couple years of lobbying local authorities the in Marion County, Indiana, the mental health court began as a formal program in 1996. Many consider this to be the nation’s first mental-health court in this second wave of mental health court initiatives. Since the PAIR Program did not operate with any new funds, there was not much scholarly research and therefore the accomplishments of Judge Goodman and the PAIR Program are frequently overlooked. The current PAIR Program is a comprehensive pretrial, post-booking diversion system for mentally ill offenders. A program launched in Broward County, Florida was the first court, to be recognized and published as a specialized mental-health court. Overseen by Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren, the Broward County Mental Health Court was launched in 1997, partially in response to a series of suicides of people with mental illness in the county jail. The Broward court and three other early mental health courts, Anchorage, AK
, San Bernardino, CA
, and King County, WA
, were examined in a 2000 Bureau of Justice Assistance
monograph, which was the first major study of this emerging judicial strategy.
Shortly after the establishment of the Broward County Mental Health Court, other mental health courts began to open in jurisdictions around the U.S., launched by practitioners who believed that standard punishments were ineffective when applied to the mentally ill. In Alaska, for example, the state’s first mental health court (established in Anchorage in 1998) was spearheaded by Judge Stephanie Rhoades, who felt probation alone was inadequate. “I started seeing a lot of people in criminal misdemeanors who were cycling through the system and who simply did not understand their probation conditions or what they were doing in jail. I saw police arresting people in order to get them help. I felt there had to be a better solution,” she explained in an interview. Mental health courts were also inspired by the movement to development other problem-solving courts, such as drug courts, domestic violence courts, community courts and parole reentry courts. The overarching motivation behind the development of these courts was rising caseloads and increasing frustration — both among the public and among system players — with the standard approach to case processing and case outcomes in state courts.
In February 2001, the first juvenile mental-health court opened in Santa Clara, California.
Since 2000, the number of mental health courts has expanded rapidly. There are an estimated 150 courts in the U.S. and dozens more are being planned. An ongoing survey conducted by several organizations identified more than 120 mental health courts across the country as of 2006. The proliferation of courts was spurred in large part by the federal Mental Health Courts Program administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which provided funding to 37 courts in 2002 and 2003.
s charged with misdemeanors, who have no history of violent crimes, and who have an Axis I diagnoses as defined by the DSM-IV.
Defendants who fit the criteria based on the initial screening are usually given a more comprehensive assessment to determine their interest in participating and their community treatment needs. Defendants who agree to participate receive a treatment plan and other community supervision conditions. For those who adhere to their treatment plan for the agreed upon time, usually between six months and two years, their cases are either dismissed or the sentence is greatly reduced. If the defendant does not comply with the conditions of the court, or decides to leave the program, their case returns to the original criminal calendar where the prosecution proceeds as normal. As a rule, most mental health courts use a variety of intermediate sanctions in response to noncompliance before ending a defendant's participation. An essential component of mental health court programs for protection of the public is a dynamic risk management process that involves court supervised case management with interactive court review and assessment.
As in other problem-solving courts, the judge
in a mental health court plays a larger role than a judge in a conventional court. Problem-solving courts rely upon the active use of judicial authority to solve problems and to change the behavior of litigants. For instance, in a problem-solving court, the same judge presides at every hearing. The rationale behind this is not only to ensure that the presiding judge is trained in pertinent concepts, such as mental illness, drug addiction or domestic violence, but also to foster an on-going relationship between the judge and participants. Although the judge has final say over a case, mental health courts also take a team approach in which the defense counsel, prosecutor, case managers, treatment professionals, and community supervision personnel (e.g., probation) work collaboratively to, for example, craft systems of sanctions and rewards for offenders in drug treatment. Many mental health courts also employ a full-time coordinator who manages the docket and facilitates communication between the different team members.
system. They argued that this was particularly true in mental health courts that focus on misdemeanor offenders who would have received short jail sentences or probation if not for the mental health court. These critics urged mental health courts to accept defendants charged with felonies, which many of the more recent courts, such as the Brooklyn Mental Health Court, have started to do.
Critics have also raised concerns about the use of mental health courts to coerce people into treatment, the requirement in some courts that defendants enter a guilty plea prior to entering the court, and about infringement on the privacy of treatment information. Furthermore, many have noted that the rise of mental health courts is, in large part, the result of an underfunded and ineffective community mental health system, and without attention to the deficiencies in community treatment resources, mental health courts can only have a limited impact. Finally, it has been noted that when scarce mental health services are redirected to those who have come in contact with the criminal justice system, it creates a perversion in the system were a person's best bet for obtaining services is to get arrested.
, Mental Health Court found that participants had reduced criminal activity during their participation. An evaluation of the Brooklyn Mental Health Court documented improvements in several outcome measures, including substance abuse, psychiatric hospitalizations, homelessness and recidivism. No multi-site mental health court comparison study has yet been completed.
Drug court
Drug Courts are judicially supervised court dockets that handle the cases of nonviolent substance abusing offenders under the adult, juvenile, family and tribal justice systems...
s, domestic violence court
Domestic violence court
Specialized domestic violence courts are designed to improve victim safety and enhance defendant accountability. They emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in response to frustration among victim advocates, judges and attorneys who saw the same litigants cycling through the justice system again and...
s, and community court
Community Court
In the United States and several other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and South Africa, a community court is a neighborhood-focused court that applies a problem-solving approach to local crime and safety concerns...
s, mental health courts seek to address the underlying problems that contribute to criminal behavior.
Mental health courts share characteristics with Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), jail diversion programs, specialized probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
and parole
Parole
Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
caseloads, and a host of other collaborative initiatives intended to address the significant overrepresentation of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
History
In the early 1980s, Judge Evan Dee Goodman helped establish a court exclusively to deal with mental health matters at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis. This court at Wishard Hospital was a dual purpose court to handle the probate court needs of persons needing to be on a civil commitment for psychiatric treatment and it established a docket to deal with cases of the mentally ill offender who had been arrested on minor charges. This was necessary as the mentally ill were frequently arrested and had charges pending when the treatment providers sought a civil commitment to send their patient for long term psychiatric treatment. Judge Goodman's court at Wishard Hospital could serve both purposes. The probate part of the mental health court would handle the civil commitment. The criminal docket of the mental health court could handled the arrest charges. The criminal charges could be put on diversion, or hold, allowing the patient's release from jail custody. The civil commitment would then become effective and the patient could be sent to a state hospital for treatment. Judge Goodman would schedule periodic hearings to learn of the patient's progress. If warranted, the criminal charges were dismissed, but the patient still had obligations to the civil commitment.In addition to arranging inpatient treatment, Judge Goodman often put defendants on diversion, or on an outpatient commitment, and ordered them into outpatient treatment. Judge Goodman would have periodic hearings to determine the patient's compliance with the treatment plan. Patients who did not follow the treatment plan faced sanctions, a modification of the plan, or if they were on diversion their original charge could be set for trial.
Judge Goodman's concept and the original mental health court were dissolved in the early 1990s.
In the mid-1990s, many of the professional mental health workers who had worked with Judge Goodman sought to re-establish a mental health court in Indianapolis. Representatives of the county's mental health service providers and other stake holders began meeting weekly. The group decided to accept the name of the PAIR Program [PAIR stood for Psychiatric Assertive Identification and Referral]. After, a couple years of lobbying local authorities the in Marion County, Indiana, the mental health court began as a formal program in 1996. Many consider this to be the nation’s first mental-health court in this second wave of mental health court initiatives. Since the PAIR Program did not operate with any new funds, there was not much scholarly research and therefore the accomplishments of Judge Goodman and the PAIR Program are frequently overlooked. The current PAIR Program is a comprehensive pretrial, post-booking diversion system for mentally ill offenders. A program launched in Broward County, Florida was the first court, to be recognized and published as a specialized mental-health court. Overseen by Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren, the Broward County Mental Health Court was launched in 1997, partially in response to a series of suicides of people with mental illness in the county jail. The Broward court and three other early mental health courts, Anchorage, AK
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...
, San Bernardino, CA
San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
, and King County, WA
King County, Washington
King County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population in the 2010 census was 1,931,249. King is the most populous county in Washington, and the 14th most populous in the United States....
, were examined in a 2000 Bureau of Justice Assistance
Bureau of Justice Assistance
The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, within the United States Department of Justice.On Monday, December 13, 2010, President Barack Obama sent to the U.S. Senate the nomination of Denise Ellen O'Donnell, of New York, to be the Director of the Bureau, in...
monograph, which was the first major study of this emerging judicial strategy.
Shortly after the establishment of the Broward County Mental Health Court, other mental health courts began to open in jurisdictions around the U.S., launched by practitioners who believed that standard punishments were ineffective when applied to the mentally ill. In Alaska, for example, the state’s first mental health court (established in Anchorage in 1998) was spearheaded by Judge Stephanie Rhoades, who felt probation alone was inadequate. “I started seeing a lot of people in criminal misdemeanors who were cycling through the system and who simply did not understand their probation conditions or what they were doing in jail. I saw police arresting people in order to get them help. I felt there had to be a better solution,” she explained in an interview. Mental health courts were also inspired by the movement to development other problem-solving courts, such as drug courts, domestic violence courts, community courts and parole reentry courts. The overarching motivation behind the development of these courts was rising caseloads and increasing frustration — both among the public and among system players — with the standard approach to case processing and case outcomes in state courts.
In February 2001, the first juvenile mental-health court opened in Santa Clara, California.
Since 2000, the number of mental health courts has expanded rapidly. There are an estimated 150 courts in the U.S. and dozens more are being planned. An ongoing survey conducted by several organizations identified more than 120 mental health courts across the country as of 2006. The proliferation of courts was spurred in large part by the federal Mental Health Courts Program administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which provided funding to 37 courts in 2002 and 2003.
Defining a Mental Health Court
Mental health courts vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but most share a number of characteristics. The Council of State Governments Justice Center has defined the “essential elements” of mental health courts. The Justice Center, in a publication detailing the essential elements, notes that the majority of mental health courts share the following characteristics:- A specialized court docket, which employs a problem-solving approach to court processing in lieu of more traditional court procedures for certain defendants with mental illnesses;
- Judicially supervised, community-based treatment plans for each defendant participating in the court, which a team of court staff and mental health professionals design and implement;
- Regular status hearings at which treatment plans and other conditions are periodically reviewed for appropriateness, incentives are offered to reward adherence to court conditions, and sanctions are imposed on participants who do not adhere to the conditions of participation;
- Criteria defining a participant’s completion of (sometimes called graduation from) the program.
Court Process
Potential participants in a mental health court are usually screened early on in the criminal process, either at the jail or by court staff such as pretrial services officers or social workers in the public defender's office. Most courts have criteria related to what kind of charges, criminal histories, and diagnoses will be accepted. For example, a court may accept only defendantDefendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
s charged with misdemeanors, who have no history of violent crimes, and who have an Axis I diagnoses as defined by the DSM-IV.
Defendants who fit the criteria based on the initial screening are usually given a more comprehensive assessment to determine their interest in participating and their community treatment needs. Defendants who agree to participate receive a treatment plan and other community supervision conditions. For those who adhere to their treatment plan for the agreed upon time, usually between six months and two years, their cases are either dismissed or the sentence is greatly reduced. If the defendant does not comply with the conditions of the court, or decides to leave the program, their case returns to the original criminal calendar where the prosecution proceeds as normal. As a rule, most mental health courts use a variety of intermediate sanctions in response to noncompliance before ending a defendant's participation. An essential component of mental health court programs for protection of the public is a dynamic risk management process that involves court supervised case management with interactive court review and assessment.
As in other problem-solving courts, the judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
in a mental health court plays a larger role than a judge in a conventional court. Problem-solving courts rely upon the active use of judicial authority to solve problems and to change the behavior of litigants. For instance, in a problem-solving court, the same judge presides at every hearing. The rationale behind this is not only to ensure that the presiding judge is trained in pertinent concepts, such as mental illness, drug addiction or domestic violence, but also to foster an on-going relationship between the judge and participants. Although the judge has final say over a case, mental health courts also take a team approach in which the defense counsel, prosecutor, case managers, treatment professionals, and community supervision personnel (e.g., probation) work collaboratively to, for example, craft systems of sanctions and rewards for offenders in drug treatment. Many mental health courts also employ a full-time coordinator who manages the docket and facilitates communication between the different team members.
Criticisms
Some have criticized mental health courts for deepening, as opposed to lessening, the involvement of people with mental illness in the criminal justiceCriminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
system. They argued that this was particularly true in mental health courts that focus on misdemeanor offenders who would have received short jail sentences or probation if not for the mental health court. These critics urged mental health courts to accept defendants charged with felonies, which many of the more recent courts, such as the Brooklyn Mental Health Court, have started to do.
Critics have also raised concerns about the use of mental health courts to coerce people into treatment, the requirement in some courts that defendants enter a guilty plea prior to entering the court, and about infringement on the privacy of treatment information. Furthermore, many have noted that the rise of mental health courts is, in large part, the result of an underfunded and ineffective community mental health system, and without attention to the deficiencies in community treatment resources, mental health courts can only have a limited impact. Finally, it has been noted that when scarce mental health services are redirected to those who have come in contact with the criminal justice system, it creates a perversion in the system were a person's best bet for obtaining services is to get arrested.
Outcomes
Because mental health courts are such a new phenomenon, there is little in the way of outcome data to determine their impact. Several studies of the Broward County court were released in 2002 and 2003 and found that participation in the court led to a greater connection to services. A 2004 study of the Santa Barbara County, CaliforniaSanta Barbara County, California
Santa Barbara County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, on the Pacific coast. As of 2010 the county had a population of 423,895. The county seat is Santa Barbara and the largest city is Santa Maria.-History:...
, Mental Health Court found that participants had reduced criminal activity during their participation. An evaluation of the Brooklyn Mental Health Court documented improvements in several outcome measures, including substance abuse, psychiatric hospitalizations, homelessness and recidivism. No multi-site mental health court comparison study has yet been completed.
Sources
- Council of State Governments (2005). A Guide to Mental Health Court Design and Implementation. New York, NY: Council of State Governments, 2005.
- Goldkamp, John S. and Cheryl Irons-Guynn (2000). Bureau of Justice Assistance. Emerging Judicial Strategies For the Mentally Ill in the Criminal Caseload: Mental Health Courts in Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, San Bernardino, and Anchorage. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/bja/mentalhealth/contents.html
- Redlich, Allison D. et al. (2005). "The Second Generation of Mental Health Courts." Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. 2005 Dec Vol 11(4) 527-538.
- States Try Out Courts Tailored for Mentally Ill, NPRNPRNPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
, 2006-08-21. - The Brooklyn Mental Health Court Evaluation: Planning, Implementation, Courtroom Dynamics, and Participant Outcomes
- Podcast explaining how the Brooklyn Mental Health Court links mentally-ill offenders to treatment and monitors compliance.
- Criminal Justice/Mental Health Information Network
- National Alliance on Mental Illness
External links
- The Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project, an initiative of the Council of State Governments, provides technical assistance to mental health courts across the country through the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance Mental Health Courts Program.
- Mental Health Courts Survey. This ongoing survey of mental health courts across the country is maintained by the Consensus Project, National GAINS Center, TAPA Center for Jail Diversion, and NAMI.
- The GAINS Center is a federally funded organization that provides research, training, and technical assistance related to people with mental illness and co-occurring disorders in the criminal justice system.
- The Center for Court Innovation is a nonprofit think tank that has developed problem-solving courts, including mental health courts, in New York State.