Therapeutic Jurisprudence in San Francisco
During the 162nd Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association was held in San Francisco May 16-21, 2009, Professor Winick presented his paper entitled Developing a Mental Health Court for Domestic Violence Perpetrators: A New Judicial Model on May 20th. This session explores these Courts by describing and evaluating a new court process in Miami, Florida that is providing specialized services for mentally ill individuals charged with domestic violence, and by presenting preliminary data of an outcome study of cases processed by this court.
Abstract:
People suffering from mental illness are being referred to the nation’s Domestic Violence Courts, which combine civil and criminal jurisdiction. However the typical diversion programs available, such as batterer’s intervention, anger management, counseling programs for drug abuse, etc., are inadequate for those with serious mental disorders.
As a result, the Miami-Dade Domestic Violence Court has developed a new approach for dealing with domestic violence offenders whose violence is a product of their mental illness. Various mental health court techniques, such as judicial interpersonal skills, motivational interviewing, and behavioral contracting are used to facilitate mentally ill domestic violence offenders’ acceptance of treatment for their illness, i.e. being INMT.
Hon. Debora White-Labora pioneered this new judicial-therapeutic model, and if she is able to attend she will relate historical and forensic insights regarding the process and field questions from attendees.
Two forensic psychiatry fellows at U. Miami Med. Schl. Dept. of Psy. & Behav. Sciences, Drs. Cureton & Ohm, will elaborate on this new judicial/therapeutic model and follow with several case studies while commenting on surfacing clinical issues.
Bruce Winick, U. of Miami Prof. of both Law and of Psychiatry, who is co-founder of therapeutic jurisprudence and was General Counsel of the N.Y. City DMH,MR, and Alcoholism Services, will situate this model within the context of other problem-solving courts, describe usual diversion methods, and discuss how this court uses principles and approaches of therapeutic jurisprudence to reach better results.
Anthony Castro, Asst. Prof. of Clinical Psychiatry, U. Miami will report the results of a retrospective and longitudinal study of 20 cases from this court over a two year period, comparing them to a sample of non-mentally ill perpetrators processed by the court in the same period.
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