Mental Health Court Outcomes: A Comparison of Re-Arrest and Re-Arrest Severity Between Mental Health Court and Traditional Court Participants

Mental health courts have been proliferating across the country since their establishment in the late 1990's. Although numerous advocates have proclaimed their merit, only few empirical studies have evaluated their outcomes. This paper evaluates the effect of one mental health court on criminal justice outcomes by examining arrests and offense severity from one year before to one year after entry into the court, and by comparing mental health court participants to comparable traditional criminal court defendants on these measures. Multivariate models support the prediction that mental health courts reduce the number of new arrests and the severity of such re-arrests among mentally ill offenders. Similar analysis of mental health court completers and non-completers supports the prediction that a "full dose" of mental health treatment and court monitoring produce even fewer re-arrests.     

Managerial incentives and access price regulation

Policy makers have identified the non-discrimination principle as a key instrument to regulate vertically integrated firms in control of upstream bottlenecks. It has been argued that the non-discrimination principle may create a level playing field, but at the expense of higher consumer prices. However, this rests on the assumption that the firms do not respond strategically to the regulation. We show that a non-discrimination requirement makes the vertically integrated firm behave more aggressively. Consequently, non-discrimination regulation rarely creates a level playing field. Neither does it necessarily increase end-user prices. Indeed, we show that end-user prices may fall.      

Comparing the effectiveness of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Henderson</Emphasis> instructions and expert testimony: Which safeguard improves jurors’ evaluations of eyewitness evidence?

Objectives

The New Jersey Supreme Court recently determined that jurors may not be able to effectively evaluate eyewitness evidence on their own. As a result, the Court proposed the use of judicial instructions to assist jurors (called Henderson instructions) and suggested the implementation of these instructions would reduce the need for expert testimony. We tested the efficacy of these instructions compared to alternative instructions and expert testimony.

Methods

We utilized a mock trial paradigm, randomly assigning 452 participants to 1 of 20 videotaped trial conditions that varied the quality of eyewitness evidence (both witnessing and identification conditions) and the type of safeguard presented during the mock trial.

Results

Jurors were sensitive to the quality of identification conditions on their own. Jurors were more likely to convict when identification conditions were good and less likely when identification conditions were poor. This relationship was mediated by eyewitness credibility ratings. Expert testimony resulted in skepticism by reducing the likelihood that jurors would convict regardless of the quality of witnessing and identification conditions. No variation of the instructions influenced verdicts.

Conclusions

While jurors were sensitive to the quality of identification conditions on their own, we observed no such effect for the quality of witnessing conditions, even with the aid of instructions and/or expert testimony. Both Henderson instructions and expert testimony may be insufficient for assisting jurors to effectively evaluate problematic witnessing conditions. Future research should examine the use of alternative safeguards.