Press Room
The Consensus Project is coordinated by:
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| PROGRAM TITLE: |
Bronx County Mental Health Court |
| AGENCY/ORGANIZATION: |
Bronx County District Attorney |
| STATE: |
New York |
| YEAR ESTABLISHED: |
2001 |
| LEVEL OF JURISDICTION: |
County |
| ISSUE AREA: |
Courts: Adjudication and Sentencing |
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Program Overview
The Bronx Mental Health Court targets for diversion adult offenders with co-occurring alcohol drug and mental health disorders who are involved in the criminal justice system. The Bronx Mental Health Court includes mentally ill defendants who are charged with felony offenses or who are persistent misdemeanants, within an alternative-to-incarceration, deferred sentencing paradigm. Clients may be referred by the community, by the jails, by defense or prosecuting attorneys or by the court system. Within the mental health court, the clinical team provides comprehensive diagnosis, treatment, and risk assessment evaluation to facilitate diversion into individualized services.
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Recent Dialogue
Question for
Everyone
The King County Mental Health Court is struggling to balance its success in referrals with resources earmarked for it. Especially in terms of size of court calendars and available calendar time, caseload/ workload numbers, etc. The dedicated defense team and other team members are feeling overwhelmed and are asking how other MHCs address caseload and calendar size. Can you provide info from your court re this? Our caseload is about 1/3 felony reduced to misdemeanor and 2/3 misdemeanor charges.
- Lois Smith
03/02/07 04:10 PM EST
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Program Description
The Bronx District Attorney, with Education and Assistance Corporation-TASC, RTI International and community partners, developed the Bronx Mental Health Court through a consensus process that began in 1999 and was first implemented in 2001. The Court targets for diversion adult offenders with co-occurring alcohol drug and mental health disorders who are involved in the criminal justice system. The program has focused particularly on linguistic, cultural and clinical competency for the Hispanic/Latino(a) and African American minority Bronx community. The program synthesized evidence-based practices from different disciplines. The overall court structure was adapted from a drug court model, the monitoring practices were adapted from a DTAP-TASC model, the assessment and team structure practices from clinical psychiatry/psychology, the HIV practices from Center for Disease Control prevention programs, and the consultation and training model from psychiatrys consultation liaison practice. A more detailed description of the court operations is provided through a linked document.
The Bronx Mental Health Court includes mentally ill defendants who are charged with felony offenses or who are persistent misdemeanants, within an alternative-to-incarceration, deferred sentencing paradigm. A majority of the defendants who are accepted also have co-occurring substance use, trauma histories and personality disorders. Clients may be referred by the community, by the jails mental health services, by defense or prosecuting attorneys or by the court system (where a structured screening questionnaire is used to facilitate case identification). Within the mental health court, the clinical team provides comprehensive diagnosis, treatment, and risk assessment evaluation to facilitate diversion into individualized services. One-third of the clients are diverted directly from the community, avoiding jail detention in addition to a potential prison sentence; two-thirds are evaluated for diversion while detained in jail and diverted directly from jail. For this cohort of jail-based clients who are facing a minimum of two years in prison, the combination of clients needs, criminal justice requirements, serious offenses, availability of services, and lack of community ties is associated with an average of three months in jail awaiting placement.
This court enhances the diversion linkage model to ensure there are no gaps in services by supplementing community resources with intensive direct clinical case management for the client, psychiatric consultation liaison to the community providers, peer and staff run groups led jointly with providers, and with monitoring for the Court. The TASC Mental Health Court staff includes psychiatrists, psychologists, masters level case managers and peers. The Court meets with defendants on a quarterly basis or as needed to monitor and support attainment of goals and compliance with the plea agreement. Consequences for violation of court mandates include an increase in service intensity or structure of the setting, frequency of court appearances, and if all other interventions have been exhausted, jail remand. Completion of the program is predicated on a period of community stability and compliance; at completion clients are sentenced as agreed in the plea.
With funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (SAMHSA-CSAT), the court has recently expanded its activities to meet the health needs of its defendantsparticularly in terms of risk for HIV contraction or transmission. It is being researched through a National Institute of Drug Abuse community supervision study. A focus on HIV was integrated into the screening, treatment planning, linkage and monitoring activities described above. Specifically, at acceptance, HIV testing and linkage is offered, HIV knowledge, attitudes, previous prevention and intervention services history and risk reduction motivation is assessed at baseline. HIV prevention and intervention services are integrated into the treatment plan and are considered in the choice of appropriate community linkages; and prevention and intervention services are now integrated into the monthly tracking forms as part of the ongoing monitoring of services. Future plans for the program include adding prevention groups and developing educational materials relevant to the programs population.
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Staff from the Consensus Project, GAINS EBP Center, and GAINS TAPA Center have not conducted an empirical evaluation of any of the profiles provided in the directory. Accordingly, the Consensus Project, GAINS EBP, and GAINS TAPA do not promote any of these programs as "models" or "best practices." Nor does the directory reflect an inventory of all relevant efforts underway across the country. Administrators of the programs included in the directory are largely responsible for maintaining information about their initiative current. Accordingly, staff cannot guarantee that the information in the directory is completely current.
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