Mental Health Court Case Study

When you think of mental illness, you don’t always think about all the ways it can affect you or your loved ones. Even if you do, you don’t realize how much a mental illness can change whoever it is affecting. “The Brain on Trial” by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, is an article about mental illnesses and our legal systems. He explains the various effects mental illnesses can have on people and how the legal systems don’t always take this in to account in court. He also talks about the changes in your brain and personality when you have something such as a tumor or dementia. His stories are true and provide real world examples of some of the effects he has seen in people who have developed a mental illness.

Mental Illness has been prevalent all throughout our history from Isaac Newton to Abraham Lincoln to Sylvia Plath and so on. These illnesses can be as minor as a slight bipolar disorder or as severe as schizophrenia. In recent years, mental illnesses are becoming more prevalent in our criminal justice systems than anywhere else. Mental illness is becoming an association with crime and based on the information that has been found, this paper will attempt to further define the problem of mental illness within our criminal justice system and offer alternatives or insights as to how to possibly help with this problem.

“The criminal justice system is not equipped nor are the professionals working within the system qualified to effectively meet the needs of offenders presenting with mental health issues” (Prior & Jones, 2017, p. 58). Mental health courts were designed to provide diversion for defendants with mental illness into community-supported and court-supervised overseen treatment (“Adult Mental,” n.d.). Making these specialty courts mandatory for the mentally ill would benefit black male defendants the most.

There are some differences between a normal criminal and a criminal that suffers from a mental illness in the criminal justice system. For example one of the many fundamentals to our criminal justice system is the principle that no one can be tried or adjudged to punishment while mentally incompetent. Trials for mentally unstable people have been modified and are run by different guidelines. Unlike a regular convict, most mentally unstable convicts are unable to comprehend or are unable to complete a trial. Once a convict with a mental illness is convicted or awaiting trail their every medical need must be accommodated within the faculty and it's staff. Without the proper medical care a person with mental illness can become

Many cases require alternate defences for those who suffer from mental disorders, this defence is known as Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder also known as NCRMD. A defence such as this is used to explain that the perpetrator had a disorder that made them unaware of the crime they had committed and that the crime was wrong. Applying NCRMD as a defence can be difficult as there are many requirements a person needs to meet before they are deemed not responsible. In some cases, it is hard to prove that the offender had a mental disorder at the time of the crime and that it is a valid defence as to why they committed the crime unknowingly. There is a lot of discussion around NCRMD being successful or unsuccessful and what should happen to the offender if they are deemed NCRMD. A recent case where NCRMD was used as a defence and was successful, was in the case of David Siu. NCRMD is a successful and valid defence if it is used in the right case to protect those in the system with mental disoders.

The United States criminal justice system has been continuously increasing incarceration among individuals who suffer from a sever mental illness. As of 2007 individuals with severe mental illness were over twice as likely to be found in prisons than in society (National Commission of Correctional Health Care, 2002, as cited in Litschge &Vaughn, 2009). The offenses that lead to their commitment in a criminal facility, in the majority of cases, derive from symptoms of their mental illness instead of deviant behavior. Our criminal justice system is failing those who would benefit more from the care of a psychiatric rehabilitation facility or psychiatric hospital by placing them in correctional facilities or prisons.

Upon reaching a verdict or accepting this plea, the court would sentence the defendant for their crime pursuant to the law upon any defendant convicted of the same crime. The defendant would then be remanded to a designated psychiatric center or correctional facility with a mental health unit. Should the mental illness abate, the defendant would then remain in prison for the duration of their sentence. Nineteen states have already enacted laws to allow a "guilty but mentally ill" verdict. In addition, three states have eliminated the insanity defense all together.

Mental health courts are a resource given to prisoners who would normally be put in prison if they had not decided to join this special program. Mental health court is a court run program by the district attorney’s office in some counties. This program is based off of traditional court room structure but is also paired with community services. Mental health courts solve a lot of different problems within our criminal justice system. The first problem it solves is the

This paper intends to examine the relationship between mental health (specifically individuals who exhibit mental illness) and the criminal justice system. The paper will be broken down into areas focusing on the issues that exists for and between the law enforcement officials and those who have mental illness and end up involved in the penial justice system. Individuals who have mental health issues are special cases that will be addressed within this paper with the focus being how they end upon the wrong side of the law and more importantly how they are treated by the criminal justice system when this occurs. By studying this subject from a historical context will enable the writer to establish how the criminal justice system in this country

Mental health courts sentence mentally ill convicted offenders to long-term treatment programs rather than incarcerating them in prisons. The programs provide mental health assessments and personalized treatment plans for offenders. (Center for Court Innovation, 2013) In 1997, the first mental health court was established. (California Courts, 2014) There are now over 300 mental health courts in the U.S (Justice Center, 2014)

Within contemporary society, the legal process of placing an individual into a detention or psychatric treatment facility is called "civil commitment." Typically, this is reserved for the mentally ill, or those people who have satisfied the Court's rule that they are a danger to others, or to themselves. Society realizes that, at times, an individual may pose a danger to themselves or to society and be unable to make rational decisions. In fact, in most jurisdictions in the modern world, involuntary commitment procedures are specifically applied to individuals who have manifested some form of serious mental illness that acts to impair their reasoning to such extent that they are unable to make cogent and logical decisions. Therefore, at these times the state (the Court system) must intercede to find ways to make the appropriate decisions under a legal template. Involuntary commitment may have, in the past, been used in certain situations, inappropriately, but the statutory criteria that indicates one is a danger to self or others usually acts as a legal axiom (Korba, 2008).

The report will discuss the following and address the legal and social issues surrounding the prosecution of mentally ill perpetrators.

Mental health courts change the criminal justice system. In addition to probation, jail, prison, and other forms of rehabilitation, a mental health court introduces a new option as “punishment”. Psychiatric treatment. But mental health courts also change the system in other ways, by criminalizing non-criminal behaviours. But the mental health courts that exist so far, with very few exceptions, accept only people charged with nonviolent low-level offenses. While these courts help some people get services, they do nothing to help the mentally ill facing prison or lengthy jail sentences, and they do not reduce the criminalization of mental illness. If mental health courts increase the punishment of minor offenses, as some undoubtedly do, their

Here once again we see the fact that mental illnesses are being blatantly ignored and clearly mental ill patients are being convicted without the proper due process because appeals and motions are being rejected because the legal system doesn’t match with the psychological stand points of mental illness

The research conducted in combination with the text of Hopkins Burke (2012), Slate et al, (2013), Duffee & Maguire, (2007) and Baum (2006), Babchuk et al, (2012), presents a complex answer to what I believe to be a multifaceted question. The research reflects some of the issues that courts and post adjudication agencies experience during a special court proceeding. The research findings indicate that courts today face a complexity of issues when addressing even an individual case. The research will focuses on the issues of relationships, particularly within a mental health court proceeding, and the impact relationships have on a courtroom workgroup and the decisions of the all parties involved.