Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Balancing Rehabilitation and Monitoring in Services for People with Mental Illness Involved in the Criminal Justice Systems

Purpose: Service initiatives aimed at people with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system have come to the attention of policy makers over the past decade due to the increasing awareness of the criminalization of the mentally ill. We have conducted three separate nationally funded research projects that examine service strategies designed to interrupt the mechanisms of criminalization. Key programmatic outcomes were compared across studies to determine if there were any relationships between recidivism and service provision among mentally ill offenders.

Methods: One study was a randomized trial designed to compare the effectiveness of assertive community treatment with traditional case management services for homeless individuals with mental illness leaving jail (N=200). The second study was a longitudinal, observational study of “new” clients of a psychiatric probation/parole unit, which supervised offenders convicted of misdemeanor and low-level felony offenses (N=250). The last study used a quasi-experimental design to assess the relative effectiveness of two service strategies: pre-booking diversion services compared with in-jail treatment services in two comparable counties (N=143).

Results: All three studies found that the provision of mental health services can have the unintended effect of increasing the probability of arrest or incarceration when the services are focused on monitoring rather than rehabilitation.

Implications for Policy and Practice: Due to the environment in which treatment services for mentally ill offenders are provided, service providers are often required to focus on monitoring and treatment adherence. However, the findings from these three studies suggests that it is extremely important to ensure that treatment services for mentally ill offenders make the delivery of rehabilitative treatment services such as teaching skills of daily living, treating the individual’s illness, and providing supportive resources the main priority in service provision.

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