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Mental health courts developed in the USA in the late 1990s as one means to reduce the involvement of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system. In response to the growth in number of mental health courts, the Council of State Governments led an initiative to identify essential elements of mental health courts to guide their development and implementation. This paper applies these essential elements to a municipal mental health court in a multijurisdictional, suburban county. While this court met most essential elements, they faced a number of challenges. The primary ones included not being able to advance from hearing municipal cases only to state misdemeanor and felonies, not having the resources to expand program capacity for municipal cases, and participants not being able to always access needed mental health treatment, rehabilitation, and support services. The paper concludes with implications for behavioral health administrators and direct service staff in implementing the essential elements of mental health courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost 1.5 million children in the United States have parents who are incarcerated in prisons. These children are at-risk for juvenile delinquency, failure in school, and residential instability. Efforts to locate and provide services to these children require cooperation from a range of social institutions that historically have not worked together. This article describes two collaboratives organized to identify and address the needs of these children. One collaborative has largely succeeded, while the other did not meet all of its goals. Drawing upon models of interorganizational and interdiscriplinary collaboration, this article analyzes their successes and failures and offers lessons for interorganizational collboratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the extent to which insanity acquittee legislation can structure the implementation of mental health policy. Description of Missouri's insanity acquittee system; Types of legislative structuring; Emphasis on the need for mental health policy maker and enforcers to be involved in the political process.

In recent years communities across the United States have instituted specialized criminal courts for defendants with substance abuse disorders and mental illness. These specialized courts seek to prevent incarceration and facilitate community-based treatment for offenders, while at the same time protecting public safety. The authors describe two types of specialized courts: drug courts and mental health courts. They critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of these courts and conclude with implications for social work education, practice, research, and advocacy.

Federalism is a system of government that divides power between two or more levels of government. During the current conservative political climate in the United States, power has shifted increasingly from the federal government to states, a move that has implications for the achievement of social justice. Consequently, it is now necessary for social workers to engage in political activity at the state and local levels, in addition to the federal level, to promote social justice. Implications for social work policy practice, research, and education for advancing social justice within the federal system of government are explored.