New Courts Hand Out Treatment, Not Sentences

One of the biggest developments in the criminal justice system this decade has been the emergence of community mental health courts, where people accused of crimes related to their mental illness are offered treatment instead of incarceration.

In 1997 you could count the number of them on one hand. Now there are at least 250 nationwide.

There has long been support for these courts in a smattering of states (California, for instance, has 41 of them in 29 counties), but they have yet to become a nationwide phenomenon. That may change over the next decade, though, because more evidence of their efficacy is coming in.

The Archives of General Psychiatry just published a comprehensive study of four community mental health courts, one each in, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties in California, Hennepin County in Minnesota, and Marion County in Indiana. Entitled “Effect of Mental Health Courts on Arrests and Jail Days,” the study concludes:

“Mental health courts meet the public safety objectives of lowering posttreatment arrest rates and days of incarceration. Both clinical and criminal justice factors are associated with better public safety outcomes for MHC participants.”

The Los Angeles Times ran a nice feature that puts a face on the people cycling through these courts. The article's author profiles a gentleman named Milton Conley who is involved with the mental health court in San Francisco. He has been abused, addicted to crack cocaine and sent to prison four times. He's also schizophrenic. In his own words: “It's been a terrible life, but it's getting better, as long as I stay off drugs and alcohol and take my medication.” Conley has been in and out of grace with the court, and slipped more than once. In short: He's exactly the type community mental health courts were designed for.

Just as interesting as Conley is this tidbit:

Of those [the courts] examined, San Francisco's court served the highest proportion of participants with schizophrenia and the greatest percentage who committed crimes against people rather than property. Yet San Francisco's program showed the greatest drop among the four courts in re-arrests compared to control groups, a 39 percent reduction compared to a 7 percent drop.

The concern most often voiced about these courts is that they may not be well suited to dealing with people who have committed crimes against other people, this evidence is a useful rejoinder to that claim. One hopes that, combined with the other evidence in the new study, it will help bring community mental health courts all the way into the mainstream.

Photo Credit: gliuoo