An examination of stakeholder attitudes and understanding of therapeutic jurisprudence in a mental health court.

Mental health courts represent a key component of contemporary responses to mental illness and disability in the criminal justice system, and yet there is uncertainty about how these courts should balance their punishment and treatment roles. This paper reports an analysis of interviews with court professionals which considers their understanding of the rationale underpinning an Australian mental health court, its effectiveness in achieving its criminal justice and clinical goals, and of broader notions of therapeutic jurisprudence. This reveals considerable support for diversionary mental health court programs of this type and professional confidence that this type of program is effective. However, the analysis also highlights conflict in the practice frameworks of the different professional groups who regularly contribute to the operations of the court. Suggestions to enhance service delivery are offered.

Mental health diversion courts: a two year recidivism study of a South Australian mental health court program.

The need to develop specialized judicial processes to deal with offenders with mental illnesses is now widely recognized and has led to the introduction of mental health court diversion programs around the world. At present, however, there is only limited evidence from which to assess the impact of these initiatives. This paper describes the South Australian model of diversion, with specific reference to the relationship between identified participant characteristics, program compliance rates, and re-offending outcomes. The results of a two-year recidivism study suggest that involvement with the program has a positive impact on recidivism, but that this is independent from the individual's level of success in the program. Lower risk offenders were more likely to achieve successful outcomes than those in the higher risk categories. The implications of these results, as well the factors that might inform the ongoing development of mental health court programs, are discussed.

The role of empathy in anger arousal in violent offenders and university students.

A lack of empathic responsiveness toward others has been consistently identified as an important antecedent to aggressive behavior and violent crime, with many rehabilitation programs for violent offenders incorporating treatment modules that are specifically designed to increase offender empathy. This study examined the extent to which cognitive (perspective taking) and affective (empathic concern, personal distress) empathy predicted anger in a clinical (male prisoners convicted of a violent offense) and a nonclinical (student) sample. Perspective taking emerged as the strongest predictor of self-reported anger in response to an interpersonal provocation, as well as being most consistently related to scores on measures of general trait anger and methods of anger control. While the relationship between perspective taking and anger was apparent for offenders as well as students, the results did not support the idea that an inability to perspective take is a particular characteristic of violent offenders.