Abstract:

This presentation will describe the interdisciplinary scholarly and law reform approach of therapeutic jurisprudence. It will situate mental health courts within the framework of problem-solving courts, such as drug treatment court and domestic violence court. These courts use prinicples and approaches of therapeutic jurisprudence to attempt to rehabilitate offenders. Mental health court is an application of therapeutic jurisprudence in practice inasmuch as it seeks to divert mentally ill offenders who have been arrested from the jail, an especially antitherapeutic setting for those with mental illness, and motivate them to obtain needed treatment and facilitate their obtaining it. Whether in practice these courts achieve the therapeutic jurisprudence objective remains an open empirical question. The presentation also will comment on how judges should use the therapeutic jurisprudence approach in mental health court to better achieve therapeutic outcomes.

More information on the conference is available on the ASA web site.