Low-cost program yields results
At the Chittenden County Mental Health Court, clients bypass district court and possibly jail time. They receive social services instead, and in exchange for successfully completing their court programs, which may include sanctions, their criminal records are expunged.
More than 100 offenders have filtered through the mental health court and compared with their incarcerated counterparts, they are the lucky ones. People with mental disorders are significantly over-represented in prison: A 2007 study showed that 34 percent of men and 56 percent of women in Vermont’s prisons had a mental illness.
On a recent Wednesday morning, about a dozen men and women, most of them young, began to filter into Judge Geoffrey Crawford’s Burlington courtroom for status conferences. The docket listed a variety of minor offenses: disorderly conduct; simple assault; disturbing the peace; petit larceny; retail theft; driving under the influence; bad checks; unlawful mischief. One woman had a single charge after her name. Most had as many as six. One young man had 20.
These are not ordinary law-breakers. All have been diagnosed with mental illnesses.
Crawford refers to them not as offenders, but clients: In exchange for completing treatment programs, their charges will be dropped.
More than 100 clients have passed through the Chittenden County Mental Health Court – the only one in the state – since it opened in 2004. They are the lucky ones. People with mental disorders are significantly over-represented in prison. A 2007 study showed that 34 percent of men and 56 percent of women in Vermont’s prisons had a mental illness.
Vermont’s mental health court was created in 2003 as one of 37 demonstration projects funded by the U.S Department of Justice. Bob Wolford, Director of Offender Services for the Howard Center, applied for the $100,000 grant to fund the court for its first two years. At the moment the court serves 25 clients. It costs about $88,000 a year to run, or a little more than $3,500 per person. The average cost of incarcerating and treating an offender in a state prison came to slightly more than $51,000 per person for fiscal year 2008, according to the Department of Corrections.
