The Courts

One idea for using a social justice approach within the context of social policymaking is continually allowing for mentally ill people to have access to resources. Using a social justice approach in social policy implementation ensures that people can have knowledge of where the resources are, and the resources aren’t restrictive. Carrying out this into social policy research/evaluation is achieved through clear research methods and data collection (O’Brien, 2011). A passion and need are in allowing mentally ill people to be better understood by police departments, especially in more conservative areas.

Social justice means allowing a problem to be answered through more than just micro level interventions. Mental health courts are an issue, and many people don’t realize why. Mental health courts see themselves as doing good for mentally ill persons. They say they help those who are charged with things like domestic violence, substance misuse, disorderly conduct, and an array of criminal charges – by allowing people to undergo court mandated group discussions (Almquist & Dodd, 2009). What many people misunderstand is how these mental health courts began. They didn’t happen for good reasons. They began as a way to respond to allegations that jurisdictions weren’t meeting their duty to follow through on legal duties to provide mental health services.

The problem with mental health courts is they are a legal and forceful court response to a medical/clinical/behavioral health issue. They are still built on the precedent that mental health is violent to someone in a community. They offer a prescriptive solution to the ethical dilemma of police responding to a mental health call. A social justice approach is helping to write public policy to help allow police, legal, and court systems to have a better procedure to use when arriving to a scene they believe is a mental health crisis but that police procedures would force them to call domestic violence.

 In doing this, many public resources are freed up to allow courts to help people properly as well as not get tangled up in figuring out what to do when SMI clients are found in court mandated domestic violence programs, and facilitators are ill-equipped. Social justice is meant to benefit all parties of the issue at hand while also keeping in mind what the end goal of a policy or program is.

The Policies

There are many federal mental health policies and looking at them means choosing a defined period of time. In March 2022, HR 1319 was signed into law by President Biden. HR 1319 promotes community mental health resources and service accessibility to all people and places an emphasis on resources to school-aged students (Egiebor, 2022). Politically and economically, COVID-19 drew this bill to becoming law. Culturally, an influx of mental health concerns among citizens and an overwhelming need for mental healthcare resources helped make this bill possible.

The ADA of 1990 is a complex thing. It means a lot to me, as a 508-compliance and disability access consultant for government contracting. It is included in police and legal definitions of qualified immunity (Madden, 2023). These seem to be at odds with each other sometimes. But I digress for now. ADA grants a lot of beautiful civil rights protections for citizens, though, when followed. It guarantees that people have access to their housing, schools, and community centers. It helps with building codes to ensure that accessible structures are a requirement and cannot be made optional in commercial spaces. It also ensures that civil areas follow accessibility needs and are barred from discrimination based on disability status.

Drug treatment is when a person is given trauma-informed care, while drug enforcement often is often trauma-inducing care and methods of leading someone to treatment. Drug treatment is centered around empowerment of the individual, and drug enforcement is centered around a criminal sentencing (Bowen & Murshid, 2016). In an overarching sense, drug treatment is much more effective. People who choose to be in treatment are much more likely to have positive outcomes associated than those who are either forced or placed involuntarily into a treatment setting. Treatment needs to be a choice.

The Data

Social workers can contribute to criminal justice reform efforts by looking at the data and taking a contemplative look at how it is being taken, utilized, and assessed. This means often that we must take a firm look at how criminal justice is being served. Talking about Domestic Violence (DV) and its impacts on communities is integral. I looked in-depth into the datasets the courts use to determine if someone is a victim, perpetrator, or simply caught up in police abuse of power but subject to court maltreatment anyhow, as courts are unlikely to admit their wrongdoings – regardless of how much money you can spend on a defense attorney, or knowledge of the law you possess.

This brings up two critical datasets to compare: those of survivor profiles and those of victim profiles – which are somehow completely different. Within victim profiles, victims are traditionally only seen as victims when they are impoverished, female, married, and have children (Smith, 2001). There is a lot of court hullabaloo around “compassionate” arresting of DV victims who defend themselves from violence that, in any other context, would not be seen as their fault. Survivor profiles show that they often don’t receive police help, social work help, are in a multicultural area with firm police intervention, and frequently are relatively well educated and financially stable (Augustyn & Willyard, 2020).

 Now, the final component. DV causes PTSD and commonly co-morbid disorders, such as severe anxiety and depression (National Domestic Violence Hotline, 2023). Within this, wouldn’t it make sense that victims would be screened as mentally ill? Well, let’s acknowledge this, too. Victims are often blamed for criminal misdemeanor offenses – such as simple assault, say. This is one of the most common charges a mentally ill person would be frightened into thinking was their fault. As well, mental illness is linked with low education, low income, and mood or psychotic disorders – the most common misdiagnoses of PTSD in females who have experienced DV (Dirks-Linhorst et al., 2019).

So, take this for what you will, but in my mind – it shows definitively how statistics around higher crime are linked to misrepresentation of victim blaming as criminal behavior on the victims and not the courts who misconstrue data and fight to protect misconduct. Reforming criminal justice is about fixing the systemic issues for those who rely on civil servants. It’s not about enforcing arrests.

References

Almquist, L., & Dodd, E. (2009). Mental Health Courts: A Guide to Research-Informed Policy and Practice [Grant-Funded Research, Grant No. 05-82376-000-HCD]. Justice Center: The Council of State Governments. https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/Publications/CSG_MHC_Research.pdf

Augustyn, M. B., & Willyard, K. C. (2020). The Contextual Influences of Police and Social Service Providers on Formal Help-Seeking After Incidents of Intimate Partner Violence. JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520915551

Bowen, E. A., & Murshid, N. S. (2016). Trauma-Informed Social Policy: A Conceptual Framework for Policy Analysis and Advocacy. American Journal of Public Health, 106(2), 223–229. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302970

Dirks-Linhorst, P. A., Linhorst, D. M., & Loux, T. M. (2019). Criminal Court-Ordered Psychiatric Evaluations:Does Gender Play a Role? WOMEN & CRIMINAL JUSTICE, 29(6), 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/08974454.2018.1520673

Egiebor, Q.-I. C. (2022). Policy At A Glance: Recent Federal Mental Health Policies. Loma Linda University Institute for Health Policy and Leadership. https://ihpl.llu.edu/sites/ihpl.llu.edu/files/docs/Policy-At-A-Glance/July%202022.pdf

Madden, R. (2023, November). Ethical Issues in Police Social Work. Self-Study, Social Work Online CE Institute.

National Domestic Violence Hotline. (2023). Domestic Violence Statistics. National Domestic Violence Hotline. https://www.thehotline.org/stakeholders/domestic-violence-statistics/

O’Brien, M. (2011). Social justice: Alive and well (partly) in social work practice? International Social Work, 54(2), 174–190. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872810382682

Smith, A. (2001). Domestic violence laws: The voices of battered women. Violence and Victims, 16(1), 91–111.