Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Mental Illness and Justice
A four part series in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, highlighted at the NAMI web site - "In the latter 20th century, the deinstitutionalization movement swept most of the mentally ill out of large institutions and into the community, where they were supposed to receive care that was less restrictive, more humane and more effective. While this has worked for some, others became 'frequent fliers' — law enforcement slang for those people trapped in a vicious circle of mental wards, homelessness or cheap boarding houses — and jail. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel's four-part series examines the scope of the problem faced by the criminal justice and mental health systems and proposes ways to stop the turning of this costly and harmful revolving door." NAMI notes that "This is not the first time the paper has succeeded in accurate coverage of mental health issues. In 2003, the Sun-Sentinel won a NAMI Media Award for Newspaper Feature Reporting."  
  

Court restructuring suggested by report (Tennessee)
Story in The Tennessean - "Tennessee's court system is costly, inefficient and needs a more uniform structure, a report released yesterday by the state comptroller's office said. ... It was critical of the lack of drug courts and mental health courts throughout the state. The majority of criminal cases in Tennessee involve nonviolent drug and alcohol cases, the report found. Yet the study cited research that shows that drug courts are an effective way to deal with these kinds of offenders."  
  

Effectiveness of mental health court being studied
Herald-Sun (North Carolina) story - "Because mental health courts across the nation are so new, not too many studies have been conducted to determine whether they are an effective way of dealing with the mentally ill who commit crimes. There are only, so far, a few simple statistics relating to the effectiveness of the Orange County Community Resource Court. But an N.C. State University graduate student is conducting research on the court. Marlee Gurrera, a graduate student in sociology, began her study in 2002 and is seeking to determine if the court is effective in reducing the number of times a defendant is arrested, if it saves taxpayer money, if it provides quality treatment for the defendants and whether defendants are helped in finding housing and jobs."