2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference
March 13 - 15, 2022
7/19/2018 | 10:15 AM - 11:30 AM | A Theory-Driven Evaluation of Mental Health Courts | Summit A
A Theory-Driven Evaluation of Mental Health Courts
Research on mental health courts consistently find that mental health courts “work” to reduce recidivism and jail days compared to regular incarceration processes. However, within the past decade, the underlying assumptions for why mental health court works have come under fire. Current mental health court research shows little to nothing in the way of direct relationships between mental health status and recidivism nor mental health treatment interventions and recidivism. Recidivism among mental health court clients is better predicted by criminogenic factors like prior arrest, days in jail before treatment, co-occurring substance use, and younger age (Rossman et al. 2012; Steadman et al 2011; Keator et al 2013; Peterson 2014). These findings contradict many of the core assumptions upon which mental health courts rest. To ensure mental health courts retain funding and continue expansion, mental health court research must change focus to uncover who mental health courts work best for, under what circumstances, and which particular aspects of intervention cause the desired results. Mental health court survival depends largely on the ability to determine under what assumptions and through what mechanisms these court programs work most effectively.
While limited in implementation, the newest research has started to look for answers within the impact of procedural justice in court processes and the program’s ability to implicitly or explicitly address criminogenic needs. However, mental health court research has three unaddressed gaps where answers may be found: 1. Identification of mental health court’s role in encouraging community engagement. 2. Determination of particular policies and procedures effects specific outcomes and 3. Addressing system-level goals of stakeholder planning teams (Fisler 2015).
I aim to address those gaps through a theory-driven program evaluation of mental health courts. The evaluation will include a mixed-method analysis including court team surveys, content analysis of mental health court documents, interviews of stakeholders, and nonparticipant observation of court dockets and court team staffing meetings. I hypothesize that community-level outcomes serve as a currently untapped source of outcome evaluation data for mental health courts that could serve as a new rational underlying mental health court success. Using a theory logic model to determine differences between various mental health courts across the nation, I aim to uncover potential new viable mechanisms by which to evaluate mental health courts and determine success. This presentation will conclude with a request for mental health courts’ participation in this doctoral dissertation research.
- Inform mental health court team members about need for theory-driven evaluation approaches for current mental health courts and offer to provide such a service
- Illustrate the gaps in mental health court evaluation and research literature in terms of their adherence to the Essential Elements and community-level impacts
- Discuss current outcomes and common evaluation methods for mental health courts
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Presenters/Authors
Chelsea Bullard-Hunsucker
(), Oklahoma State University, chelsea.e.bullard@okstate.edu;
Chelsea Bullard-Hunsucker is an ABD doctoral student completing her dissertation research on mental health court evaluation methods at Oklahoma State University Department of Sociology. She specialized in criminology, deviance, and social psychology and aims to earn her PhD by 2019. She earned her Master's in Forensic Psychology at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences in 2014. Her thesis work examined Oklahoma mental health courts and the potential for evaluation through jurisdictional crime rate variation. Chelsea worked as a mental health court assistant coordinator in Oklahoma, a park ranger in Colorado, and a forensics teacher in Massachusetts. She currently works as a teaching and research assistant in both the Sociology and Forensics Departments at OSU while completing her studies. She teaches sociology, the sociology of law, juvenile delinquency, social problems, research methods, and research ethics. She also works on grant research related to women’s homelessness and Native American tribal community health initiatives. Her most recent publication was entitled Evaluating Mental Health Court by Impact on Jurisdictional Crime Rates published in the Criminal Justice Policy Review.
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