Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

'Theorizing Mental Health Courts"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new article by E. Lea Johnston that is now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: To date, no scholarly article has analyzed the theoretical basis of mental health courts, which currently exist in forty-three states.  This article examines the two utilitarian justifications proposed by mental health court advocates -- therapeutic jurisprudence and therapeutic rehabilitation -- and finds both insufficient.  Therapeutic jurisprudence is inadequate to justify mental health courts because of its inability, by definition, to resolve significant normative conflict. In essence, mental health courts express values fundamentally at odds with those underlying the traditional criminal justice system. Furthermore, the ability of therapeutic rehabilitation to offer sufficient theoretical grounding depends on the validity of the assumed link between mental illness and crime...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 22, 2010 (boomark / email).