ODU study touts success of Norfolk's mental health courts

NORFOLK

The exchanges between the judge and the defendants in Circuit Courtroom Number 8 on Tuesday afternoons are a little unconventional. But then, so is this court.

There's chatter about grandchildren, back pain, blood pressure problems and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

"What are you doing about finding a job?" Judge Charles E. Poston asks one man. "...You know you don't have to do much to make us happy."

"You finish the anger management classes?" he asks another. "Is it a waste of your time?"

The defendant says that it's not and adds, "I get a better way of looking at things."

After hearing how another woman hasn't contacted her case workers in a week, the judge admonishes, "I'm disappointed in you."

It might be unconventional, but it's working.

This is one of the state's few mental health courts. A recent study shows that it's successfully keeping many offenders out of jail, stabilized in treatment programs and sober.

Old Dominion University's Social Science Research Center concluded that the 4-year-old program has helped mentally ill offenders "achieve stability over an extended period without incarceration and without risking public safety."

The program closely monitors nonviolent mentally ill inmates who have not committed any sex crimes. They meet regularly with social workers

and probation officers, attend weekly court hearings and submit to drug and alcohol screenings.

Orlie Gutierrez, mental health director of the Norfolk City Jail, gushed about the accomplishments of the people who used to be regular residents of the jail.

"I would have never believed they would have done that well, and all it took was some structured supervision and sanctions that they're well aware of," he said. "They actually have a life now."

Gutierrez said before the program, some would spend six to eight months in jail for trespassing.

Studies show about 16 percent of local and regional inmates in Virginia are mentally ill. More than one-half have substance abuse problems.

"A lot of the individuals served in mental health courts end up in the criminal justice system because they didn't get the services they needed," said Ron Honberg, legal director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

There are about 180 mental health courts in the United States, but only a handful are in Virginia, Honberg said.

"To incarcerate people with mental illness is very counterproductive and very expensive," he said. Jails, he said, "are guaranteed to make symptoms worse."

The ODU study followed the progress of Norfolk's mental health court participants from July 2006 to December 2007. About 30 people are in the program at any one time, and they generally remain for at least a year.

The close supervision "ensured that risky behavior or signs of deteriorating functioning were quickly detected and actions taken to prevent participants from getting themselves into serious trouble," the study said.

Participants overwhelmingly indicated in study interviews that they thought they had been treated fairly.

"They realize that they would be held accountable for their mistakes, perhaps for the first time in the lives, and the desire to avoid incarceration resulted in more responsible behavior," the study said.

The main sanction for not following the rules is brief jail confinements, usually one week. Slightly more than one-half of those in the program for more than nine months were jailed briefly, mostly for drug or alcohol use.

The study showed that the coordination between agencies ensures that participants receive needed services and comply with treatment plans.

"For some defendants, lack of access to services has impaired their ability to resolve their problems in the past," the study said.

Once the offenders get into treatment, they tend to stay out of trouble.

The study showed that the number of days that program participants remained out of jail while in the program was more than 21,000 during the study period - resulting in savings of about $1.63 million in jail costs.

The report also found that the recidivism rate for program participants is significantly lower than that of other mentally ill offenders.

Recidivism rates ranged from 3.5 percent for those who had been out of the program for six months to 30 percent for those who'd been done for two years. That compares with national recidivism rates of around 70 percent at two years after release for mentally ill offenders who were not in such a program.

"It gives me great joy to see the program do so well," Gutierrez said. "The work is on their part; we just set up the structure and they do all the work."

Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com