Does Riverside Mental Health Court Reduce Re-arrest Among Mentally Ill Offenders

Since the late 1990's there has been a growth in the emergence of Mental Health Courts (MHC) to reduce the criminalization of the mentally ill and provide treatment in lieu of incarceration. MHC is based on therapeutic jurisdiction with a focus on the providing mental health services to reduce further commission of criminal acts. The current study used Riverside Mental Health Court archival data collected from an excel spreadsheet maintained by RMHC staff and RMHC clinical records. A total of 901 cases consisting of RMHC participants and traditional court participants were used to explore the relationship between RMHC program participation and re-arrest rates amongst mentally ill offenders. Furthermore, data collected on 217 RMHC participants were used to examine the factors contributing to successful completion of the RMHC program and avoiding re-arrest was conducted to identify the components of a positive outcome. The findings of this study demonstrated that the successful completion of RMHC was found to have an overall mild negative relationship with re-arrest, meaning participants successfully completing RMHC had fewer re-arrests than Traditional Court Participants. Participants psychiatric diagnosis and demographic factors were not found to have a significant impact on the predictive probability for the successful completion of RMHC. Trauma history was found to increase the predictive probability of graduating from RMHC; however, witnessing domestic violence prior to age 18 was found to increase the predictive probability of not graduating from RMHC resulting in re-arrest or additional legal sanctions.