Editorial: Next step for mental health courts: better measures

Jails and prisons historically have been filled with people who suffer from mental illness.

According to a self-reported survey of penal institutions compiled in 2006 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 73 percent of women and 55 percent of men in state prison had mental health problems. In federal prison, it was 61 percent of women and 44 percent of men. In local jails, 75 percent of women and 63 percent of men.

That need not be the case.

We've long supported alternative sentencing programs to treat nonviolent offenders whose drug use leads them to crime. In many ways, mental health courts - they are operating in 24 Illinois counties - are built on the same framework. Staff writer Marie Wilson, who has been working on an occasional series of stories about mental health issues and last year examined the scourge of drug use from the perspective of those on the front lines, was invited to sit in on Kane County's Treatment Alternative Court to see how it diverts nonviolent offenders from jail to treatment.

The stewards of the program flag court cases in which an offender's unmanaged mental illness leads to nonviolent crime, whether the person is aware of it or not.

"Unfortunately when they come in, a lot of the people don't want mental health treatment. We have to

teach them what is a problem," Lindsey Liddicoatt, coordinator of the Kane County program, told Wilson. "We're opening the door and introducing them to the mental health world."

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this tough-love approach does good in the suburban mental health courts, with the rate of completion at roughly half or sometimes better. In Cook, Kane and Lake counties, the rate of participants who have graduated from their treatment programs is 48 percent; in McHenry County it's 71 percent; in DuPage, it's 76 percent.

What's unknown is just how well the programs do at putting these folks on a path that keeps them on the right course - and out of trouble with the law. Recidivism rates are determined differently depending on jurisdiction. While anecdotal evidence will make us feel good about individual efforts, a standardized process for measuring the effectiveness of programs would illuminate best practices and make these alternative treatment programs more effective.

The Administrative Office of Illinois Courts is recommending uniformity in statistics as part of a certification process beginning this year, and that is a good start.