Mental Health Courts in an Era of Criminal Justice Reform

By Stephen Eide

Introduction - Mental health courts place seriously mentally ill defendants in community treatment as an alternative to incarceration. In recent decades, these and other “problem-solving” courts have expanded dramatically nationwide. These programs were long seen as core elements of criminal justice reform and frequently reduce recidivism more effectively than traditional court systems. But recently, problem-solving courts’ place in the criminal justice reform agenda has become more ambiguous. Not only has energy shifted toward more radical ideas (such as jail “abolition”), but some far-reaching reforms threaten court programs’ traditional incentive structure. Mental health courts rely on criminal sanctions as leverage; they lose that leverage when criminal justice reforms reduce or jettison the use of criminal sanctions entirely. This brief assesses mental health courts’ future in an era of criminal justice reform. It considers how sentencing, bail, and discovery reforms threaten the structure of mental health courts. It also evaluates attempts to “co-opt” the model, through New York’s “Treatment Not Jail Act.” Overall, the brief argues that mental health courts will retain their relevance for the foreseeable future, owing mainly to their small scale. Mental health courts serve only a small fraction of the universe of mentally ill offenders. They will therefore never contribute significantly to mass de-carceration, the goal of progressive reformers. But that also means that they are likely to retain their relevance, even if the use of criminal sanctions declines, as long as the population of mentally ill offenders remains substantial. This brief will conclude with suggestions on how to sustain mental health courts in the future 

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2024. 15p.