My Trip to Treatment Court

Also called "mental health courts," treatment courts have been popping up throughout the country in an attempt to deal with mentally ill individuals who become involved with the criminal justice system, but really don't belong in it. I've had some experience dealing with mentally ill individuals in the context of my job within the criminal justice system, and I am in complete agreement that the courts, jails, and prisons are unable to either help the mentally ill people that come afoul of the law or protect the community. My personal feeling is that if there were some way to help the mentally ill become stabilized over the long-term and integrated into society, society would then be protected from them, and there would be no need to warehouse these people as is currently being done to a greater or lesser extent.

My view of this seems to be shared by our newest district judge, the chief deputy district attorney and our court administrator. As a result, we have been meeting to discuss creating a treatment court here. As part of our investigation into the viability of this, we took a trip to a treatment court in another jurisdiction yesterday. It was exciting to see the participants complying with their medications, and thereby complying with their probation, stabilized, and happy. The program we observed appears to be helping the people in the community, and I commend them for doing such a good job with it in such a short time. (The program is only about 6 months old.)

However, the more we spoke with the judge in charge of the program, the more frustrated I became with the lack of resources we have here. The program I observed would never have got off the ground if the treatment providers in the community hadn't backed the program immediately and enthusiastically. Virtually all the services in the area were on board and doing what they could to help, and that's great. But here we have almost no services at all. There is one program that provides caseworkers to help the mentally ill find residences, get on disability, etc., but they are so under-funded and overworked that the turnover is astronomical and the staff is poorly trained. I believe we have 2 therapists in the private sector, and it takes months to get an appointment, even if you can pay them or have insurance. I don't even know whether they take medicaid or medicare, but I doubt it.

Another concern I have is that the treatment court I observed is a part of probation. This means that the participant must have (at some point) been competent to stand trial or plead guilty to a crime. That's all fine, and everything. But the clients that I have had that I'm most concerned about aren't competent to stand trial or plead guilty, even when they are taking their medications. When they are taking their medications, they are no longer dangerous, so they don't have to be locked up. But when this occurrs, their criminal cases are dismissed, and there is no one to monitor whether they continue with their medications or not. So, as soon as they're off their medications, they get in trouble with the law again. The clients I have that are competent when they're on their meds are placed on probation (usually) and they're monitored by their probation officer. Some times this works and some times this doesn't, but at least they're not completely on their own, like those whose cases are dismissed.

What would be more helpful, I think, is a program in which someone whose case is pending is monitored by a treatment court, and then their charges are dismissed when they successfully complete it. It would be an alternative to them being found incompetent while sitting in jail for months and then going to the state mental hospital. The mental hospital would appreciate it, since they're always short of beds; and the client would appreciate it, since they wouldn't have to sit in jail waiting for a competency evaluation to be completed. I think there's a treatment court like that in a different town in the state, so I'm going to push to observe that next time our little team meets.

But our trip was a good learning experience!