Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2010 Sep-Oct;33(4):227-35. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2010.06.004. Epub 2010 Jul 23.
To reduce criminal justice involvement of persons with mental disorders, many communities have created mental health courts. Early mental health courts were restricted to persons charged with nonviolent misdemeanors. Recently mental health courts have begun to accept persons charged with felonies and violent crimes. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the process and outcomes of a mental health court that accepts persons charged with more serious offenses from the perspective of stakeholders in the court. Data come from semi-structured interviews with 43 professionals involved with the mental health court, including judges, attorneys, probation officers, case managers, mental health professionals, and agency administrators. The stakeholders endorsed mental health court compared to traditional court for reducing criminal justice involvement of individuals with mental disorders with a history of repeated arrests. The observations of stakeholders revealed important themes to consider in research evaluating mental health courts, including selection mechanisms, supervision processes, treatment access, use of sanctions, competency, indicators of effectiveness, participant characteristics associated with better or worse outcomes, and mechanisms of change.
为了减少精神障碍患者的刑事司法涉入，许多社区都设立了精神卫生法庭。早期的精神卫生法庭仅限于审理被控非暴力轻罪的人。最近，精神卫生法庭开始受理被控重罪和暴力犯罪的人。据我们所知，这是第一项从法庭利益相关者的角度研究接受更严重犯罪指控的人的精神卫生法庭程序和结果的研究。数据来自对 43 名参与精神卫生法庭的专业人士的半结构化访谈，包括法官、律师、缓刑官、案件经理、心理健康专业人员和机构管理人员。与传统法庭相比，利益相关者支持精神卫生法庭，因为它可以减少有多次被捕记录的精神障碍患者的刑事司法涉入。利益相关者的观察结果揭示了在评估精神卫生法庭的研究中需要考虑的重要主题，包括选择机制、监督过程、治疗机会、制裁使用、能力、有效性指标、与更好或更差结果相关的参与者特征，以及变革机制。
