Examining Mental Health Court Completion: A Focal Concerns Perspective

Abstract

Sociologists have long-raised concern about disparate treatment in the justice system. Focal concerns has become the dominant perspective in explaining these disparities in legal processing decisions. Despite the growth of problem-solving courts, little research has examined how this perspective operates in non-traditional court settings. This paper used a mixed-method approach to examine focal concerns in a mental health court. Observational findings indicate that gender and length of time in court influence the court's contextualization of noncompliance. While discussions of race were absent in observational data, competing-risk survival analysis finds that gender and race interact to predict mental health court termination.

Longer-Term Impacts of Mental Health Courts: Recidivism Two Years After Exit

“…Although we were able to control for differences in sex, substance abuse, and criminal history in multivariate analyses, we could not control for these sources of bias. Similarly, selection bias occurred in the division of the MHC sample into completers and noncompleters (32)(33)(34).…”

Examining changes in procedural justice and their influence on problem‐solving court outcomes

“…We selected a 3-month follow-up for two reasons. It provided ample time for the defendants to have had multiple interactions with the judge and case manager, and prior research indicates that most persons are terminated from the court within this time period (see Ray & Dollar, 2013).…”

Understanding Decision-Making in Specialized Domestic Violence Courts

“…The degree to which these theoretical frameworks are useful for understanding decision-making in less traditional court contexts is unclear (e.g., Hartley, Maddan, & Spohn, 2007;Ray & Dollar, 2013). A number of arguments can be made to either support or refute the utility of these theories for understanding decision-making in specialized DV courts.…”