BJA Publishes Resources for Justice Professionals Seeking to Improve Outcomes for People with Mental Illness

May 12, 2005 - The Bureau of Justice Assistance announced today the availability of three resources (and a fourth publication coming soon) for justice professionals seeking to improve outcomes for people with mental illness:

1. A Guide to Mental Health Court Design and Implementation


Audience: Criminal justice and mental health professionals, as well as leaders in state and local government generally, considering the possibility of developing- or have made the decision to implement-a mental health court.

*Addresses issues such as identifying stakeholders to plan and administer court, screening defendants to participate in the court, and sustaining a court's operation.

*Enables new and existing courts to benefit from some of the lessons learned from the BJA grantee courts and some of the many other courts that have sprouted across the country in recent years.

Author: Council of State Governments


2. Navigating the Mental Health Maze


Audience: Criminal justice practitioners who, before becoming involved in a mental health initiative, knew little about mental illness or the mental health system.

*Offers a basic overview of mental illness, including symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment

*Discusses the coordination of treatment and court-based services.

Authors: Fred C. Osher, M.D., Director, Center for Behavioral Health, Justice & Public Policy and Irene S. Levine, Ph.D. , Professor, New York University School of Medicine


3. A Guide to Collecting Mental Health Court Outcome Data


Audience: Mental health court practitioners and policymakers generally who need to be thinking about measuring the impact of their program.

*Provides practical strategies for deciding which data to collect, for obtaining, evaluating, and comparing the data

*Identifies challenges that typically discourage courts from collecting and analyzing data and explains how to clear these hurdles

*Positions courts to demonstrate the value of their initiatives and to improve the broader understanding of the effectiveness of mental health courts.

Author: Henry J. Steadman, Ph.D., President of Policy Research Associates


4. Coming Soon: What is a Mental Health Court?


A short description of what is (and what is not) a mental health court and an update about their status across the country. Addresses questions such as why jurisdictions have launched mental health courts and emerging trends in mental health court design.

Download these documents for free by clicking on the titles above, or order hard copies by contacting:

Lauren Almquist
Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project, Council of State Governments Justice Center
t. 646-383-5743 / lalmquist@csg.org

Development of this series of publications is only one aspect of the technical assistance that the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Mental Health Courts Grant Program is making available through the Council of State Governments' Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project.

Additional activities to take place during the upcoming months include coordinating a conference on court-based initiatives to improve the response to people with mental illness in the criminal justice system, establishing and coordinating a network of mental health court learning sites, publishing the "Essential Elements of a Mental Health Court, and providing support to judges generally through the Judges Leadership Initiative on Criminal Justice / Mental Health.