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Legislation
to Reauthorize Mental Health Courts
Kay
Farley
Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH) introduced S. 289 on
February 3, 2005, to reauthorize funding for mental
health courts. The legislation amends the Omnibus
Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C.
3793(a)(20), and authorizes an annual appropriation of
$10,000,000 for mental health courts through fiscal
year 2011. Cosponsors of the legislation are Senators
Pete V. Domenici (R-NM), Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT), and
Richard J. Durbin (D-IL).
The
Senate approved the legislation by a voice vote on April
18, 2005, and S. 289 was referred to the House
Judiciary Committee on April 19.
The
grants would be for programs that provide
"continuing judicial supervision" over
misdemeanor and nonviolent offenders with mental
illness, retardation, or co-occurring mental-illness
and substance-abuse disorders. The grant program was
first authorized in 2001 (P.L. 106-515). As originally
authorized, the legislation would fund up to 100
mental health courts modeled after existing programs
in Broward
County, Florida, and King County, Washington. In those
programs, offenders charged with misdemeanors or
nonviolent felonies who are believed to be suffering
from mental illness or retardation, including
substance-abuse disorders, go before specially trained
judges knowledgeable about mental illness and local
treatment programs. The offenders, in exchange for
dismissed charges or reduced sentencing, voluntarily
receive outpatient or inpatient care, along with
coordination of other services, such as life skills,
housing placement, vocational training, job placement,
and health care. The court maintains jurisdiction over
the offender for a term up to the maximum sentence or
probation that the offender could receive for the
offense.
While
the grant program was authorized in 2001, the program
has never been fully funded. Congress has a two-step
funding process. The first step is the authorization
legislation that establishes the purposes and funding
limits for grant programs. The second step is the
appropriations process. In the formal appropriations
process, funds are allocated by Congress as a line
item in a federal agency budget. If that doesn't
happen, there is an informal process for earmarking
discretionary funds within a federal agency's budget.
To date, the funding for mental health courts has been
as a result of earmarks in the Byrne Discretionary
grant program, which Senator DeWine has secured. For
the current fiscal year (FY 2005), the earmark is for
$400,000.
Institutionalizing
Problem-Solving
Court Practices
Dennis
Jones
Twenty judges and practitioners participated in a
working summit on Institutionalizing
Problem-Solving Practices in All Courts
held at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada,
May 10-12, 2005. The National Center for State Courts,
National Drug Court Institute, Center for Court
Innovation, and fifteen judges from various
problem-solving courts, including family courts,
juvenile courts, drug courts, domestic violence
courts, mental health courts, and child support
courts, took part in the summit.
Months
before the summit, participants filled out an
extensive survey, which described the seven elements
present in all problem-solving courts and asked
participants to identify practices within each element
that could be used by a general assignment judge who
had very limited time and resources. Participants
discussed the survey responses in small groups and at
plenary sessions at the summit, and they provided new
ideas and comments both verbally and electronically.
The plenary sessions were facilitated by Heidi Kolbe
of The Kolbe Company in Sacramento,
California.
The
summit was designed by Robin Wosje, assistant academic
director of NJC, with some assistance from Dennis
Jones, both of whom will work over the coming months
to translate the large amount of information generated
into an instrument for use by general assignment
judges interested in applying problem-solving
techniques and practices.
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Problem-Solving
Court Elements
- Integration
of screening/assessment/treatment/
rehabilitation services with justice system
processing that occurs as close to initiating
event as possible
- Partnerships
with public agencies and community-based
organizations to facilitate the delivery of
services
- Team
approach with court/judge as leader
- Frequent
monitoring of behavior and incentives/
sanctions applied as close to the behavior as
possible
- Ongoing,
appropriate judicial interaction with case
participants
- Strategic
use of both incentives and sanctions
- Ongoing
training of judges, staff, and community
Taken
from Kolbe Company (Heidi Kolbe, principal),
"Institutionalizing Problem-Solving Practices in
All Courts: A Working Summit," final report,
2005, p. 8.
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ICM
Offers Online Problem-Solving Courses
The
Institute
for Court Management (ICM) offers free
online courses for the court community via WebCT,
an asynchronous learning platform. The only
prerequisites for access are a username
and password. Each course is described below.
Building
an Effective
Drug Court Team
This course aims to strengthen the leadership and
team-building capabilities of drug courts; provide
instructional modules by which drug courts can improve
organization, operations, and productivity; and
provide a resource for trainers/facilitators to help
drug courts improve collaboration and performance of
interdisciplinary teams.
Judicial
Education on Substance Abuse
Explore
the nature of alcohol and other drug abuse, and the
dynamics of recovery in the court context, in this
primer for judges. Judges who handle all types of
cases are welcome to share information and work with
experts in other disciplines to develop new systemic
approaches to address this large and challenging court
population.
A
Look at the Literature
Compiled
by Anne Skove
and Chuck
Campbell
Justice System
Journal
Problem-solving courts and principles took center
stage in the latest issue of the National Center for
State Courts' Justice
System Journal 26, no. 1
(2005).
- In
"Problem-Solving Courts: Models and
Trends" (pp. 35-56), NCSC's Pamela M. Casey
and David B. Rottman describe the four
most-prominent problem-solving court models in the
United States: community courts, domestic violence
courts, drug courts, and mental health courts. An
earlier
version of this article, which grew from
a presentation at a coonference on Problem-Solving
Courts: An International Perspective
in Edinburgh,
Scotland (2003), is also available on NCSC's Web
site.
- In
"Applying Problem-Solving Principles in
Mainstream Courts: Lessons for State Courts"
(pp. 57-75), Donald J. Farole, Jr., et al. discuss
the results of an "exploratory study" of
the potential of applying problem-solving
principles to more-conventional courts. The
article pulls on information provided by focus
groups of judges with problem-solving court
experience in California
and New York and is scheduled to be posted on the Center
for Court Innovation's Web site.
- "Justice
in Red Hook" (pp. 77-90) is about just
that-the history of the Red
Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, New
York. Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox describe the
history and effectiveness of this community court
and its relationship to the surrounding community.
This
issue also includes a review of Bruce J. Winick and
David B. Wexler (eds.), Judging
in a Therapeutic Key: Therapeutic Jurisprudence and
the Courts (Durham, NC:
Carolina Academic Press) by Judge Steve Leben
(Kansas), who is also the editor of Court
Review, the journal of the American Judges
Association, and a member of JSJ's
editorial board.
Justice
System Journal is
featured on Westlaw,
HeinOnline, the Index
to Legal Periodicals, and other
online databases.
Online
at NCSC
Ensuring
Adequate Funding for the Courts
How can courts ensure sufficient
funding? This editorial published in Judicature
88, no. 4 (January-February 2005), by the American
Judicature Society, offers several recommendations.
The key is taking an active role by:
- forming
positive relationships with other branches and
with constituents
- becoming
more involved with the legislative process
- undertaking
cooperative study of issues, needs, and problems
of courts
- educating
the media, other branches of government, and the
public about the importance of the judiciary's
adjudicative and administrative functions
Mental
Health Court Evaluations: An Annotated Review of the
Literature with Commentary
Mental health courts are relatively new, having begun
in the mid-to-late 1990s, and proliferating to over
100 thanks to federal funding. Due to their newness,
evaluations and information about mental health courts
can be difficult to come by. This new online,
annotated guide reviews mental health court
evaluations. The evaluation process will be
increasingly important as more federal funding becomes
available, because courts will have to show results to
obtain such funding.
Using
Technology to Assist Judges, Communities, and Victims
of Domestic Violence: Who's Doing What
How are the latest technologies-e-filing, online forms
and information, databases, videoconferencing, and
online education-being used by those who handle
domestic violence cases? Find out how
- People
seeking restraining orders and who speak English,
Spanish, Korean, or Vietnamese in Contra
Costa County, California, can read online guides,
including instructions via video and audio
- A
woman in Jackson County, Missouri, can e-file a
protection order from the shelter in which she is
staying to the courthouse
- Women
in some Arizona
shelters can testify before a judge via
videoconference, thus protecting their privacy and
safety
- Law
enforcement and courts in Pennsylvania
and Iowa are linked statewide, allowing for a
seamless process of sending protection orders
electronically.
You
can read more about how courts are using technology in
domestic violence cases in the winter 2005 issue of Family
Violence Forum, one of NCSC's e-newsletters. This
newsletter is produced by NCSC's Family
Violence Forum Community of Practice. Learn
more about how technology is improving the operations
of all types of courts at NCSC's Ninth National Court
Technology Conference (CTC9)
in Seattle,
Washington, September 13-15, 2005.
National
Judicial College
Judges who hear DWI cases will find the National
Judicial College's (NJC) new report Strategies
for Addressing the DWI Offender: 10 Promising
Sentencing Practices to be
a helpful resource. The report is the result of the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA)
National Driving While Intoxicated (or Impaired)
Sentencing Summit, which was held at NJC in Reno,
Nevada, March 15-16, 2004. Participants included
judges, researchers, treatment professionals,
probation and parole officers, and NHTSA officials.
This
report takes up the following ten sentencing
practices: DWI courts, staggered sentencing,
sentencing circles, vehicle and license-plate
sanctions, ignition interlock devices, electronic
monitoring and SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol
Monitor), victim-impact panels, cognitive behavioral
therapy, drug therapy, and reentry courts and
programs.
Orders
can be made via fax to (301) 386-2194.
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