In a overcrowded justice system, mental health diversions work | Editorial

Unlike 22 other states, New Jersey doesn’t have a network of mental health courts, where defendants who commit nonviolent, petty crimes can be diverted to treatment programs if they have a mental illness. Those work much like our drug courts, which have shown that treatment and oversight are far more effective than incarceration and humiliation.

But legislative efforts to create mental health courts have been stalled for years in our state, and our finest jurists have decided that this can no longer wait.

A mental health diversion program adopted by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner was recently launched in Essex and Morris Counties, and it could become the model used throughout the rest of the state.

The premise is simple: Many people caught in the criminal justice system have a history of mental illness, and seeking tough penalties for defendants who commit minor offenses is counterproductive -- especially when other interventions are available.

So defendants in the county lockups are given mental health assessments, and those with documented illnesses are offered a different path than jail cells and court rooms. It usually involves a supervised treatment regimen – therapy, medication, employment assistance – and periodic reporting to the assignment judge or a diversion officer.

“These individuals will have an opportunity to become stabilized, and then it’s up to the prosecutors to make a judgment,” says Judge Glenn A. Grant, the Administrative Director of the Courts. “And like drug court, the prosecutor can decide to downgrade charges or in some cases even dismiss the charges, based upon this person’s compliance.”


For now, the Department of Human Services is providing seed funding, and Judge Grant expects the initiative to expand to Camden and Middlesex Counties next year.

These programs work. Union County has used a similar model for many years, and a subsequent Rutgers study found that it slashed the recidivism rate by half. But it has not been codified by statute, despite the need and widespread acceptance. As Judge Grant put it, “When do you have the Chief Justice of a state court system, the attorney general and the public defender’s office involved with this kind of collaboration?”

This is the kind of progressive thinking you expect from Rabner, the driving force behind the historic reform of New Jersey’s bail system, which allowed thousands of nonviolent, low-level criminals to get their lives back.

A mental health diversion initiative is a meaningful achievement, because our system should not be measured by prison time, but by the strategies that show an enlightened and humane path forward in criminal justice.

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