Law Commons^™

“I Saw Guns And Sharp Swords In The Hands Of Young Children”: Why Mental Health Courts For Juveniles With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Fetal Alcohol Spectrum/Disorder Are Needed, Michael Perlin, Heather Cucolo, Deborah Dorfman

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

In this Article, we offer—we believe for the first time in the scholarly literature—a potentially (at least partially) ameliorative solution to the problems faced by persons with autism (ASD) and fetal alcohol disorder (FASD) in the criminal justice system: the creation of (separate sets of) problem-solving juvenile mental health courts specifically to deal with cases of juveniles in the criminal justice system with ASD, and with FASD. There is currently at least one juvenile mental health court that explicitly accepts juveniles with autism, but there are, to the best of our knowledge, no courts set up specifically for these two …

Problem-Solving Courts And The Outcome Oversight Gap, Erin R. Collins

UMKC Law Review

The creation of a specialized, “problem-solving” court is a ubiquitous response to the issues that plague our criminal legal system. The courts promise to address the factors believed to lead to repeated interactions with the system, such as addiction or mental illness, thereby reducing recidivism and saving money. And they do so effectively – at least according to their many proponents, who celebrate them as an example of a successful “evidence-based,” data-driven reform. But the actual data on their efficacy is underwhelming, inconclusive, or altogether lacking. So why do they persist?

This Article seeks to answer that question by scrutinizing …

Creating A Home Base For Treatment In Homeless Courts, Kyle C. Troeger

Student Publications

As the number of unsheltered homeless increases, an alternative to criminalization, homeless courts, have also become more common. 18 States currently have one or more specialty court programs dedicated to meting out alternative sentencing to the local homeless. Homeless courts are a rehabilitative process with the end goal of reintegration into society. They allow nonviolent misdemeanors to be resolved without jail time or fines. In lieu of traditional sentencing is community service and mandated self-improvement. This chapter examines the current criminalization, and history, of homelessness in the United States. Of primary interest is the development of homeless courts as an …

The Problem Of Problem-Solving Courts, Erin Collins

Law Faculty Publications

The creation of a specialized, “problem-solving” court is a ubiquitous response to the issues that plague our criminal legal system. The courts promise to address the factors believed to lead to repeated interactions with the system, such as addiction or mental illness, thereby reducing recidivism and saving money. And they do so effectively — at least according to their many proponents, who celebrate them as an example of a successful “evidence-based,” data-driven reform. But the actual data on their efficacy is underwhelming, inconclusive, or altogether lacking. So why do they persist?

This Article seeks to answer that question by scrutinizing …

Mandatory, Fast, And Fair: Case Outcomes And Procedural Justice In A Family Drug Court, Melanie Fessinger, Katherine Hazen, Jamie Bahm, Jennie Cole-Mossman, Roger Heideman, Eve Brank

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Problem-solving courts are traditionally voluntary in nature to promote procedural justice and to advance therapeutic jurisprudence. The Family Treatment Drug Court (FTDC) in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a mandatory dependency court for families with allegations of child abuse or neglect related to substance use. We conducted a program evaluation examining parents’ case outcomes and perceptions of procedural justice to examine whether a mandatory problem-solving court could replicate the positive outcomes of problem-solving courts. Methods: We employed a quasi-experimental design that compared FTDC parents to traditional dependency court parents (control parents). We examined court records to gather court orders, compliance …

Arrests As Guilt, Anna Roberts

Faculty Articles

An arrest puts a halt to one’s free life and may act as prelude to a new process. That new process—prosecution—may culminate in a finding of guilt. But arrest and guilt—concepts that are factually and legally distinct—frequently seem to be fused together. This fusion appears in many of the consequences of arrest, including the use of arrest in assessing “risk,” in calculating “recidivism,” and in identifying “offenders.” An examination of this fusion elucidates obstacles to key aspects of criminal justice reform. Efforts at reform, whether focused on prosecution or defense, police or bail, require a robust understanding of the differences …

Status Courts, Erin R. Collins

Law Faculty Publications

This Article identifies and analyzes a new type of specialized "problemsolving" court: status courts. Status courts are criminal or quasicriminal courts dedicated to defendants who are members of particular status groups, such as veterans or girls. They differ from other problemsolving courts, such as drug or domestic violence courts, in that nothing about the status court offender or the offense he or she committed presents a systemic "problem" to be "solved." In fact, status courts aim to honor the offender's experience and strengthen the offender's association with the characteristic used to sort him or her into court.

This Article positions …

Mental Health Courts And Sentencing Disparities, E. Lea Johnston, Conor P. Flynn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Despite the proliferation of mental health courts across the United States, virtually no attention has been paid to the criminal justice effects these courts carry for participants. This article provides the first empirical analysis of differential sentencing practices in mental health and traditional criminal courts. Using a case study approach, the article compares how Pennsylvania’s Erie County Mental Health Court and county criminal courts sentenced individuals who committed the same offenses and held the same average criminal history score. Information on the mental health court—including eligibility criteria, plea bargaining and sentencing procedure, sentencing policies, program length, graduation rates, likelihood of …

People With Secrets: Contesting, Constructing, And Resisting Women’S Claims About Sexualized Victimization, Rose Corrigan, Corey S. Shdaimah

Catholic University Law Review

What do sexual assault victims and women charged with prostitution have in common? Both are processed through a criminal justice system where legal actors assess their claims of victimization and either provide or deny resources and recognition in response to those claims. Ideal victim theory posits that not all victims’ claims are treated equally due to static factors such as personal characteristics or case facts. Professor Corrigan and Professor Shdaimah present the Arena of Intelligibility, an original analytical tool developed from their empirical data, to more effectively explain case outcomes for women affected by sexual crimes.

The Arena explains criminal …

Problem-Solving Courts: From Innovation To Institutionalization, Michael C. Dorf, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Michael C. Dorf

No abstract provided.

Flawed Coalitions And The Politics Of Crime, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

Bipartisanship can be dangerous. In the late 1970s, liberal and conservative forces united to discard two centuries of federal sentencing practice and usher in an era of fixed guidelines that would reshape the criminal justice landscape. In the decades that followed, liberals would come to bitterly regret their alliance with conservative sentencing reformers. The guideline regime established by the Sentencing Reform Act ultimately advanced hardline conservative criminal justice goals that were antithetical to the objectives of many of the Act’s former liberal supporters.

Researchers have shown that a particular cognitive bias — cultural cognition — can explain why intense partisan …

Procedural Due Process In Modern Problem-Solving Courts: An Application Of The Asymmetric Immune Knowledge Hypothesis, Leah C. Georges

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Problem-solving courts, such as drug and mental health courts, function under the model of therapeutic jurisprudence—the idea that legal policies and procedures should help and not harm clients, within the confines of the law (Winick & Wexler, 2002). Although it would seem that the lack of procedural due process in most problem-solving courts is in direct opposition to the best interests of a client, it is possible that observers find this more of a problem than do the court clients themselves. This two-experiment study applied Igou’s (2008) AIK hypothesis to problem-solving courts’ practice of sanctioning in the absence of due …

The Future Of Problem-Solving Courts: Inside The Courts And Beyond, Stacy Lee Burns

Stacy Lee Burns

No abstract provided.

John Brown Went Off To War: Considering Veterans’ Courts As Problem-Solving Courts, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

In this paper, I seek to contextualize veterans courts in light of the therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) movement, the turn to problem-solving courts of all sorts (especially focusing on mental health courts), and the societal ambivalence that we have shown to veterans in the four decades since the Vietnam war.

I argue that TJ’s focuses on how law actually impacts people’s lives, on the law’s influence on emotional life and psychological well-being and on the need for law to value psychological health and avoid the imposition of anti-therapeutic consequences whenever possible can serve as a template for a veterans courts model …

The Judge, He Cast His Robe Aside: Mental Health Courts, Dignity And Due Process, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

One of the most important developments in the past two decades in the way that criminal defendants with mental disabilities are treated in the criminal process has been the creation and the expansion of mental health courts, one kind of “problem-solving court.” There are now over 300 such courts in operation in States, some dealing solely with misdemeanors, some solely with non-violent offenders, and some with no such restrictions. There is a wide range of dispositional alternatives available to judges in these cases, and an even wider range of judicial attitudes. And the entire concept of “mental health courts” is …

Theorizing Mental Health Courts, Lea Johnston

E. Lea Johnston

To date, no scholarly article has analyzed the theoretical basis of mental health courts, which currently exist in forty-three states. This Article examines the two utilitarian justifications proposed by mental health court advocates—therapeutic jurisprudence and therapeutic rehabilitation—and finds both insufficient. Therapeutic jurisprudence is inadequate to justify mental health courts because of its inability, by definition, to resolve significant normative conflict. In essence, mental health courts express values fundamentally at odds with those underlying the traditional criminal justice system. Furthermore, the sufficiency of rehabilitation, as this concept appears to be defined by mental health court advocates, depends on the validity of …

Animal Violence Court: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence-Based Problem-Solving Court For The Adjudication Of Animal Cruelty Cases Involving Juvenile Offenders And Animal Hoarders, Debra L. Muller-Harris

Animal Law Review

Cases involving cruelty to animals are currently handled by the traditional criminal courts. These courts, however, are not effective at punishing animal abusers or protecting animal victims. Although all states have laws criminalizing various forms of animal cruelty, the reality is that most cruelty cases are not prosecuted; even when cruelty cases are successfully prosecuted, punishments are weak. This Comment proposes the creation of an Animal Violence Court, using juvenile animal abusers and adult hoarders as ideal candidates for a pilot animal cruelty justice system. The Animal Violence Court will provide for the ongoing safety and care of animal victims, …

Community Voice And Justice: An Essay On Problem-Solving Courts As A Proxy For Change, Brenda Bratton Blom, Julie Galbo-Moyes, Robin Jacobs

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

A Conversation About Problem-Solving Courts: Take 2, Jane M. Spinak

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With The Experts: The Future Of Problem-Solving Courts

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Taking A Stand In A Not-So-Perfect World: What’S A Critical Supporter Of Problem-Solving Courts To Do?, Corey Shdaimah

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Problem-Solving Courts: Inside The Courts And Beyond, Stacy Lee Burns

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Problem-Solving Justice: An International Perspective, Greg Berman, Aubrey Fox

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Romancing The Court, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

Problem-solving courts, created at the end of the 20th century, make court-based solutions central to addressing significant societal problems, such as substance abuse and its impact on criminal activity and family functioning. Yet, lessons gleaned from over 100 years of family court history suggest that court-based solutions to intractable social problems have rarely been effective. This article asks three questions of the problem-solving court movement: What problem are we trying to solve? Is the court the best place to solve the problem? What are the consequences of giving authority to a court for solving the problem? Answering those questions through …

Problem-Solving Courts: From Innovation To Institutionalization, Michael C. Dorf, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Theorizing Community Justice Through Community Courts, Jeffrey Fagan, Victoria Malkin

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article reports on research conducted on the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, New York. It theorizes the structure and process of community justice, focusing on the model offered by community courts and examining how the Red Hook Community Justice Center's development and implementation are products of its immersion in the intersection of societal, spatial, and political dynamic within the Red Hook neighborhood. The article begins by reviewing the sociological perspectives that converge in the historical development of "community justice." It continues by setting forth a framework of social regulation and control that shapes the internal workings of …

Just The (Unweildy, Hard To Gether, But Nonetheless Essential) Facts, Ma'am: What We Know And Don't Know About Problem-Solving Courts, Greg Berman, Anne Gulick

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article asses what is known and what remains to be understood about problem-solving courts. Specifically, the article asserts that drug courts serve a needy population, court mandated treatment programs have higher retention rates, those who participate longer have better outcomes, those in drug courts had lower rates of recidivism, drug use, and that graduated sanctions have statistically significant impact on offenders behavior, sanctions are crucial to the model's effectiveness, post-program studies are sparse, drug courts are less costly than traditional adjudication, but cost savings for jail and prison beds are less clear. The article also addresses questions that remain …

Therapeutic Jurisprudence And Problem Solving Courts, Bruce J. Winick

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article offers a number of suggestions concerning how judges should act in problem solving court contexts to spark the motivation of the individual to achieve rehabilitation and increase compliance with treatment. The proposals are derived from psychological literature in other contexts but further analysis and empirical research is needed. The article finds that therapeutic jurisprudence can contribute to the functioning of problem solving courts which can refine therapeutic jurisprudence approaches.

Specialized Courts: Not A Cure-All, Phylis Skloot Bamberger

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article argues that while specialized courts, such as drug courts, dealing with defendants charged with crimes are of critical importance, sole or primary reliance on specialized courts are not sufficient. Instead, centralized resources should be available as necessary to all courts in a county or city in which alternatives to incarceration are possible, although not automatic because not all defendants are serviced by specialized court.

Just The (Unweildy, Hard To Gether, But Nonetheless Essential) Facts, Ma'am: What We Know And Don't Know About Problem-Solving Courts, Greg Berman, Anne Gulick

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article asses what is known and what remains to be understood about problem-solving courts. Specifically, the article asserts that drug courts serve a needy population, court mandated treatment programs have higher retention rates, those who participate longer have better outcomes, those in drug courts had lower rates of recidivism, drug use, and that graduated sanctions have statistically significant impact on offenders behavior, sanctions are crucial to the model's effectiveness, post-program studies are sparse, drug courts are less costly than traditional adjudication, but cost savings for jail and prison beds are less clear. The article also addresses questions that remain …