Journal ArticleDOI
Effectiveness of a Mental Health Court in Reducing Criminal Recidivism and Violence
Dale E. McNiel,Renée L. Binder +1 more
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TLDR
It is shown that participation in the mental health court program was associated with longer time without any new criminal charges or new charges for violent crimes and maintenance of reductions in recidivism and violence after graduates were no longer under supervision of themental health court.Abstract:
Objective: In response to the large-scale involvement of people with mental disorders in the criminal justice system, many communities have created specialized mental health courts in recent years. However, little research has been done to evaluate the criminal justice outcomes of such courts. This study evaluated whether a mental health court can reduce the risk of recidivism and violence by people with mental disorders who have been arrested. Method: A retrospective observational design was used to compare the occurrence of new criminal charges for 170 people who entered a mental health court after arrest and 8,067 other adults with mental disorders who were booked into an urban county jail after arrest during the same interval. A matching strategy based on propensity scores was used to adjust analyses for nonrandom selection into mental health court. Results: Propensity-weighted Cox regression analysis, controlling for other potential confounding variables (demographic characteristics, clinical variables, and criminal history), showed that participation in the mental health court program was associated with longer time without any new criminal charges or new charges for violent crimes. Successful completion of the mental health court program was associated with maintenance of reductions in recidivism and violence after graduates were no longer under supervision of the mental health court. Conclusions: The results indicate that a mental health court can reduce recidivism and violence by people with mental disorders who are involved in the criminal justice system.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Problem‐Solving Courts: Theory and Practice
TL;DR: Problem-solving courts (PSCs) as discussed by the authors are a popular and fast-growing alternative to the usual way of handling criminal cases, providing court-supervised treatment to certain groups of offenders by addressing the underlying causes of criminal behavior.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stakeholder views of a mental health court.
Dale E. McNiel,Renée L. Binder +1 more
TL;DR: The observations of stakeholders revealed important themes to consider in research evaluating mental health courts, including selection mechanisms, supervision processes, treatment access, use of sanctions, competency, indicators of effectiveness, participant characteristics associated with better or worse outcomes, and mechanisms of change.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Effect of Homelessness, Housing Type, Functioning, and Community Reintegration Supports on Mental Health Court Completion and Recidivism
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated whether community stability indicators predict program completion and delay re-arrest for homeless versus non-homeless mental health court participants in the Bronx Mental Health Court.
Journal ArticleDOI
More of the same? Treatment in mental health courts.
TL;DR: The research found that mental health court participation increased the frequency of outpatient treatment, but that social services and treatment specialized to address criminal risk factors were uncommon both at the baseline and at the 6-month follow-up.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects
TL;DR: The authors discusses the central role of propensity scores and balancing scores in the analysis of observational studies and shows that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates.
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Nonparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects under Exogeneity: A Review
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the state of the art in estimating average treatment effects under various sets of assumptions, including exogeneity, unconfoundedness, or selection on observables.
Journal ArticleDOI
Propensity score estimation with boosted regression for evaluating causal effects in observational studies.
TL;DR: Propensity score weights estimated using boosting eliminate most pretreatment group differences and substantially alter the apparent relative effects of adolescent substance abuse treatment.
Journal ArticleDOI
Estimation of Causal Effects using Propensity Score Weighting: An Application to Data on Right Heart Catheterization
Keisuke Hirano,Guido W. Imbens +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider methods for estimating causal effects of treatments when treatment assignment is unconfounded with outcomes conditional on a possibly large set of covariates, and apply these methods to data on the effects of right heart catheterization (RHC) studied in Connors et al.
Book
Rethinking Risk Assessment: The MacArthur Study of Mental Disorder and Violence
John Monahan,Henry J. Steadman,Eric Silver,Paul S. Appelbaum,Pamela Clark Robbins,Edward P. Mulvey,Loren H. Roth,Thomas Grisso,Steven M. Banks +8 more
TL;DR: Rethinking Risk Assessment as discussed by the authors is a pioneering investigation that challenges preconceptions about the frequency and nature of violence among persons with mental disorders, and suggests an innovative approach to predicting its occurrence.