Treatment Courts News Archive

Mental health courts are creating a great deal of discussion and have provoked a surprising variety of responses from stakeholders in the criminal justice system and the mental health system. Here are some of the challenges, questions and tensions under discussion.

Today, there are mental health courts in a number of U.S. cities, and many more mental health courts are in the planning stages. A recent study by the Crime and Justice Research Institute documented the practices of the first four mental health courts, highlighting a set of common procedures and goals that typify the mental health court approach.

What remains for drug courts is to determine how to make a difference in the next chapter of participants’ lives: the return to independent community living after graduation from drug court. After all, the ultimate test for drug courts is not whether their clients graduate, but whether they are able to live drug-free and become law-abiding members of society.

Based on the demonstrated success of drug courts—and the enthusiastic public attention these courts have generated—a number of states have begun to take the next step, seeking not just to replicate pilot drug courts, but rather to test system-wide the viability of new approaches to the problem of addiction.