Journal ArticleDOI
Effectiveness of a Mental Health Court in Reducing Criminal Recidivism and Violence
Dale E. McNiel,Renée L. Binder +1 more
Reads0
Chats0
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
More filters
Mental Health Courts: An Interface Between Social Work and Criminal Justice
TL;DR: Mental health courts (MHCs) as mentioned in this paper are an example of problem-solving courts, aiming to improve the quality of life for those involved in the criminal justice system, link clients to community treatment resources, and reduce recidivism and crime rates in a more cost-effective manner than within the traditional criminal justice process.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Impact of Felony Diversion in San Francisco
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors estimate the impact of a referral to felony pretrial diversion programs on case outcomes and subsequent criminal justice contact and find that the benefits of diversion are concentrated among females, those who are under the age of 25, and those facing drug sales charges.
Journal ArticleDOI
Characteristics and Outcomes of People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Participating in a Mental Health Court.
TL;DR: Demographic and clinical characteristics differed, but criminal justice or program characteristics did not, and inclusion in some mental health courts exclude people with IDD was appropriate.
DissertationDOI
Understanding The Experiences And Perceptions Of Specialty Mental Health Probation Officers
Journal ArticleDOI
Jail diversion: a practical primer.
TL;DR: This article focuses primarily on the first three Sequential Intercept Model intercept points as related to jail diversion and reviews types of diversion programs, research outcomes for diversion Programs, and important components that contribute to successful diversion.
References
More filters
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.