Negotiated Pathways: PSMD who Commit Low-Level Offenses

Negotiated Pathways:
PSMD who Commit Low-Level Offenses in the Criminal Justice System

Principal Investigator: Colleen Gillespie, Ph.D. (NYU-Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service)

PROJECT GOALS

Aims of this study are to:

describe persons with serious mental illness charged with low-level offenses as they first come into contact with the criminal justice system,
document the criminal justice pathways they travel as their cases are processed,
explore their perspectives on and involvement in this process,
explore the effects of particular decisions on subsequent pathways and situations,
generate insights into the determinants and consequences of particular pathways.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS

Method: Initial activities were to focus on refining methodologies for researching the criminal justice experiences of low-level, seriously mentally ill offenders and gaining access to an arraignment court as the appropriate setting to recruit and enroll a cohort of participants as they are first processed by the criminal justice system. Arrangements were made with a local arraignment court and the study was to begin to enroll arraignees at the start of this project year. However, for reasons both political and practical, criminal justice administrators requested that this project seek an alternative arraignment court. Project activities have focused, therefore, on approaches to other potential sites.

The PI has worked closely with the Legal Aid Society of Queens County to develop a flexible and creative protocol that meets the research needs of the project while protecting the privacy and welfare of its targeted participants within the chaotic environs of the arraignment court. In particular, it became clear that special efforts must be made to ensure that this research project does not itself induce prosecutors to suspect that defendants have a mental disorder and therefore all low-level offenders will be targeted for recruitment and then screened for serious mental illness.

Upon final approval, the project will be able to start almost immediately to recruit and enroll participants, as the screening instruments and baseline and follow-up interviews have all been finalized.

The protocol for this project has been approved by the three Institutional Review Boards (IRBs): NKI, NYU Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects, and the NYSOMH’s Specialized Forensic IRB. Although application was made more than a year ago, the NYC Dept. of Health IRB has not yet approved this project. Their concerns hinge on legal ramifications of a (potential) documented lack of adequate discharge planning, a concern prompted by a class action suit on behalf of detainees with mental disorders released from the city’s jail system. Settlements negotiations are ongoing.

In the interim the PI has engaged in alternative research activities that include describing the nature and characteristics of an innovative program that provides alternatives to incarceration for felony offenders (the Nathaniel Project at the Center for Alternative Sentencing). The central goal here is to identify the strategies, approaches, techniques, ad hoc arrangements and collateral conditions/provisions developed by the program to convince judges, assistant district attorneys, public defenders, defendants and service providers to work together to make the program function effectively. This involves describing the defendants who participate in the program in terms of many of the key characteristics that were included in the original protocol, outlining the range of alternatives that are possible, and determining which are feasible for which participants, in which particular situations, and why.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS/ POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Results will provide a detailed description of a sample of persons with serious mental illness who are arrested for low-level offenses and will document what happens to these individuals over time. Such information is critical to efforts to determine how to minimize inappropriate criminal justice involvement of people with serious mental illness and to alternative pathways.

To date, the salient lessons learned have chiefly to do with the difficulties of doing research of this sort in a litigious environment. The implications from the alternative research (planned in the interim) will derive from the more finely grained understanding of its “innovativeness” about alternatives to incarceration and how they work in a specific context. That contextualization is particularly critical when examining issues of “technology transfer” – i.e., how such programs may be effectively replicated elsewhere. Might it be possible, further, to disseminate some crucial constituent parts of models without having to create a separate, independent programs, and thus innovate procedures within with (without replicating the whole) traditional criminal court systems.

PLANS

The New York City Dept. of Health IRB has been asked to review the proposal contingent upon the settlement of the class action suit against the city filed on behalf of PSMD who did not receive discharge planning when released from the NYC jail system. The PI is in contact with the Corporation Counsel for NYC to determine when the class action suit is likely to be resolved and whether the project can re re-constructed to avoid the city’s liability concerns

Entered: July 17, 2001
Updated: June 24,2002