Seattle University Collaborative Projects - International Academy of ...

New Zealand’s mental health legislation provides several safeguards that are intended to protectand promote the rights of people subject to compulsory psychiatric treatment. Exactly how thesesafeguards work in practice and whether or not they meet their intended functions has receivedlittle empirical attention. This presentation will report the findings of two qualitative studiesfocused on various safeguards aimed at ensuring people have access to legal advice, advocacyand the right to appeal their status while being detained for psychiatric treatment. The trials andtribulations of carrying out the statutory watchdog role of ‘district inspector’ will be firstlyexamined by reporting the findings of a study founded on in-depth interviews, the collection ofaudio-diaries and shadowing of lawyers who undertake this role. This will be followed by ananalysis of the decision-making of the Mental Health Review Tribunal hearings based onethnographical observation, document analysis and interviews with tribunal members, applicantsand their lawyers. The paper will conclude by assessing how these safeguards measure upagainst their aims of providing pro-therapeutic, fair, respectful and dignified legal processes forusers of mental health services.Do Structural Rather than Therapeutic Factors Determine the Placement ofOffenders in Mental Health Courts?Tracy D. Gunter, Indiana University (tdgunter@iupui.edu)Eric J. Miller, Saint Louis University (emille33@slu.edu)Jails and prisons in the United States have, in effect, become dumping grounds for individualsafflicted with mental health problems. The community care-oriented goal of effectivelyintegrating individuals with mental disorders into the larger community is not matched by eitherpractice or funding. Many mentally ill individuals are simply released from hospital into thecommunity with minimal provision made for their care. These people often cycle from homelessshelter to prison to hospital, without any effective means of therapeutic support.Mental health courts have emerged as a central innovation seeking to break the cycle ofrecidivism and incarceration of the mentally ill. Although these courts are judicially supervised,they operate outside of the traditional criminal justice system and employ a "problem-solving"approach to promote compliance with community treatment in the hopes that this compliancewill relieve the primary cause of the criminal offending. The courts are designed to address“systemic failures in public mental health and the criminal justice system”: on the one hand, bychanneling mentally ill offenders away from incarceration and into community treatment; on theother hand, by motivating participants to accept the recommended treatment.Some scholars have criticized this approach as in fact enhancing the involvement of people withmental illness in the criminal justice system. They claim the courts use undue coercion andinvade the private realm of healthcare information, further stressing inadequate communityresources, and diverting local funds from community mental health treatment modalities.Our empirical research investigates five mental health courts as they exist in Missouri, todetermine whether mental health (as opposed to other criminogenic factors) is the primary riskfactor driving the creation of and referral to mental health courts. As is the case throughout the446