Mental health courts are an extremely recent phenomenon.  While they appear to be a promising strategy to reduce the involvement of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system, very little research is available on their effectiveness in general, or how different community variables affect outcomes for the court’s participants.  Some research points to the relative success of some individual mental health courts that have been in operation for several years in which defendants were twice as likely to receive services for their mental illness and were no more likely to commit a new crime, despite spending 75 percent fewer days in jail compared to comparable defendants. 

Nearly 2.1 million individuals with severe mental illness are incarcerated in U.S. jails each year (New Freedom Commission, 2004). Among these admissions, 72% also meet criteria for co-occurring substance abuse disorders.  Prisoners with mental illness cost the nation an average of nearly $9 billion a year (NAMI, 2004).

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that at midyear 2005 more than half of all prison and jail inmates had a mental health problem, There are a rising number of mentally ill inmates, who have been left without treatment in crowded jails because the state’s psychiatric beds are full.  Florida Partners in Crisis (FPIC, 2004) reports that Florida’s local jails have become the largest public psychiatric hospital, housing over 10,000 offenders with mental illnesses, many of whom are low level offenders. There are more than 4 times as many people with mental illnesses in Florida jails than in state psychiatric hospitals (NAMI, 2004).

The current top five mental health disorders encountered upon incarceration are: depressive disorders which include bi-polar disorder and major depression, substance abuse, adjustment disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders.

The term mental health court is most often used to refer to a specialized docket for defendants with mental illnesses that provides (1.) the opportunity to participate in court-supervised treatment; and (2.) a court team composed of a judge, court personnel and treatment providers, which defines terms of participation such as continued status assessments with individualized treatment plans and incentives as well as a resolution of cases upon successful completion of mandated treatment.