Comparing public safety outcomes of mental health court participants and treatment as usual jail detainees

In this presentation, public safety outcomes of mental health court participants are examined, addressing the key policy question of how mental health courts impact public safety. The two major public safety measures are annualized arrest recidivism and number of incarceration days, both of which are the public policy measure as to whether mental health courts “work” without compromising public safety. Arrest records were obtained from the FBI for all subjects for 18 months before and after their entry into the specialized court (MHC) or jail (TAU). We also obtained their in-county jail and state prison incarceration histories for the same before and after time periods. Despite the differences in the types of clients enrolled in these four mental health courts, the range of crimes for which they are charged, and the use of sanctions such as jail to gain compliance, the public safety outcomes are remarkably similar across the four sites. In general, while both MHC and TAU samples show similar trends in both annualized arrests and incarceration days in the 18 months following study enrollment, the improvement in the public safety outcomes for the MHC participants is significantly better than the TAU sample. Further examined is who among MHC clients have better public safety outcomes. We find that criminogenic factors are most strongly associated with both likelihood of arrests and more incarceration days than are clinical factors.