PSMD Pathways through NYC Criminal Justice System

Making Decisions About the Processing of Persons with Serious Mental Disorder Arrested for Low-Level Offenses within the Criminal Justice System

Principal Investigator: Colleen Gillespie, Ph.D., Investigators: John Billings, J.D., Beth Weitzman, Ph.D., Sue A. Kaplan, J.D.

PROJECT GOALS

To determine the roles of mental health resources and interventions in the criminal justice system;
To use that information to better understand how and why criminal justice system personnel make particular decisions involving the processing of low-level offenders with serious mental disorders during arraignment.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES/ FINDINGS

Method: Semi-structured interviews with 16 key personnel (including holding pen personnel, public defense attorneys, assistant district attorneys, judges and court administrators) have been conducted. In these interviews participants were asked to describe the decisions they would make in prototypical cases developed on the basis of preliminary interviews, to explain their reasons for particular decisions made as well as the resources (information, expertise, etc) that they drew upon to make that decision, and finally, interviewees were prompted to consider alternative decisions that, were they possible, would better serve ultimate goals for the detainees.

Results: An in-depth procedural process chart which describes criminal justice system pathways for low-level PSMD offenders has been developed using procedural manuals, city reports, and key informant expertise. The pathway chart describes the major decision-making points throughout the three stages of the criminal justice process:

arrest through arraignment;
incarceration;
trial through sentencing.

This chart identifies points where inappropriate involvement of PSMD offenders in the criminal justice system might be effectively minimized and barriers toward minimizing such involvement.

Interviews with forensics experts indicated that the two most critical functions in the criminal justice process were screening and assessment (to identify individuals with serious mental disorders, to make recommendations regarding their needs while incarcerated, and/or to identify the services that would provide alternatives to incarceration) and training and education of court and corrections personnel (to help them understand mental illness, treatment, and services). The criminal justice personnel responsible for making critical decisions regarding the arraignment processing of low-level, seriously mentally ill offenders were then identified and a series of prototypical cases representing each of those decisions (filing charges, determining which charges to file, setting bail, pleading out, evaluating for fitness to proceed) were developed based on the preliminary results of a related project (Negotiated Pathways in the Negotiating Lives in Communities core).

None of the decision-makers interviewed had any specialized training in mental health and yet all felt an obligation to recognize and address mental health problems in the defendant population. However, their roles within the criminal justice system often precluded acting upon that perceived mission. For example, public defenders often tried not to learn more about a particular defendant’s mental status for fear that they would be 730’ed, that is mandated to receive a psychiatric examination, or for fear that a prosecutor or judge would “get wind” of a mental illness problem and demand bail or a tougher sentence down the road. Assistant district attorneys and judges, in general, had conflicting goals within their criminal justice mission, both of which conflicted with any therapeutic mission to which they might personally ascribe: not wanting to know about mental health problems in the defendants they saw because they did not want to open the door to any extenuating circumstances, while absolutely wanting to know about mental status so that they could make the right decisions in determining how to protect the public. These individual-level conflicts reflect the larger tensions between the missions and goals of the mental health and criminal justice systems.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS/POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Findings thus far have highlighted two key areas that will be explored further as part of this project: the importance of defense attorneys as the key and representatives of low-level defendants with mental illness in the court system and the degree to which decision-makers are hungry for data that provides them with a less idiosyncratic and more systematic view of the prevalence of particular types of defendants with mental illness and the case-related situations and scenarios in which they are involved. For example, defense attorneys would lobby their organizations (Legal Aid, Public Defenders) for changes in practice and policy if they could establish the actual prevalence of situations that they encounter in their individual professional lives. Heads of public defender organizations would push for changes if they had evidence of the magnitude of the need for such changes.

PLANS

The initial round of interviews has largely focused on arraignment and will be expanded to include the trial and sentencing phases of the criminal justice process. PI is exploring conducting a survey of defense attorneys with several public defender organizations in at least two boroughs. Administrators of the organizations are enthusiastic about the idea and we are currently working out some of the inevitable practical and logistical difficulties. The survey would be as representative as possible (given to a large, broad sample of public defenders) and would ask them to a) indicate the degree to which they have experienced a series of scenarios involving low-level offenders with mental illness or suspected mental illness and b) describe their views of appropriate and ideal resolutions of these scenarios. If such a survey proves feasible and yields constructive data, PI would hope to try to field a similar survey with the more difficult-to-access population of judges and prosecutors. Results from the decision-making interviews combined with the defense attorney survey would be substantial enough to constitute an article to be submitted by late fall of this year.

In addition, we will evaluate the feasibility of linking administrative data sets in order to follow PSMD as they move into, through, and out of the criminal justice system. Finally, a stakeholders’ meeting will be held at the culmination of the project in order to share findings, elicit feedback and comments, and facilitate cooperation among the involved parties.

Presentations:

Decisions, Decrees and Defaults
Policy Advisory Board, Nov. 2000

Entered: 3/19/99

Updated:6/24/02

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