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
Continuity of Care in Early Intervention Programs and Court Support Programs: Giving Voice to Service Recipients and Their Families
TL;DR: A high degree of convergence in clients' and families' perspectives regarding key features of each of the five dimensions of continuity of care is revealed, indicating that indeed all dimensions are important to clients and families.
Improving the Outcomes of the South Australian Mental Health Court: An Examination of the Predictors of Success
TL;DR: This paper investigated the role that mental health problem-solving courts play within the Australian criminal justice system and demonstrated that these courts can be an effective solution in the delivery of effective justice responses to vulnerable offenders, if administered in a manner that focuses on risk rather than clinical variables.
Book ChapterDOI
Reducing Recidivism and Pathways to Success
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on assessing the efficacy of MHCs using quantitative and qualitative data, focusing first on criminal recidivism, and then describe reductions in criminal behavior post court-exit using administrative court data.
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.
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.