What is the JLI?
The JLI's mission is to support and enhance the efforts of judges who have already taken leadership roles on criminal justice / mental health issues and promote leadership among more judges to address the overrepresentation of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.
The JLI provides resources, including a quarterly newsletter, semi-annual meetings, an email listserv, and this Web site, designed to help adult criminal court judges improve their courts' responses to people with mental illness and encourage systemic change in the criminal justice and mental health systems. The audience of this initiative will include civil court judges to the extent that they become involved in criminal court matters (e.g., when probate courts assume jurisdiction for a mental health court). The JLI does not focus on juvenile court judges, as JLI staff and leaders recognize that juvenile justice issues raise a unique set of challenges that require specific expertise.
History
The Council of State Governments (CSG) Criminal Justice / Mental Health Consensus Project and the Technical Assistance and Policy Analysis (TAPA) Center for Jail Diversion convened an exploratory meeting of four judges who have been instrumental in local, state, and national efforts to improve the response to people with mental illness in the criminal justice system in October 2004. Following this meeting, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Stratton and Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Steven Leifman assumed roles as co-chairs of the new initiative. Sensitive to the many organizations and associations that represent subsets of judges and court officers, CSG, TAPA, and the co-chairs planned and developed the JLI in consultation with the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), the Center of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), and other judicial organizations. To download the JLI Overview, please click here.
A Note on Mental Health Courts
It is important to clarify how the JLI relates to mental health courts--a term that generally refers to specialized dockets devoted to certain defendants with mental illness. There are over 100 self-identified mental health courts in the country. Mental health courts are just one of the many strategies that communities have employed to address problems at the intersection of mental health and criminal justice.
The purpose of the JLI is to help judges lead collaborative, community-based efforts to improve outcomes for individuals with mental illness in the criminal justice system. In some communities, this may include the development of a mental health court; in others, it may not. The Consensus Project and the TAPA Center do not encourage or discourage the establishment of mental health courts, but rather view them as one of a number of options available to communities. Judicial leaders should facilitate the design and implementation of strategies based on the unique needs and attributes of their jurisdictions.
The Consensus Project, as the Bureau of Justice Assistance's (BJA) technical assistance provider for its Mental Health Courts Program (MHCP), administers the BJA MHCP Web site. Please click here to learn more about this program specifically and mental health courts generally.