The effectiveness of specialized legal counsel and case management services for indigent offenders with mental illness

BACKGROUND: In recent years, jurisdictions have recognized the strain placed on limited existing resources by criminal offenders with mental illness who frequently cycle through local jail facilities. In response, many locales have developed and implemented specialized programs to more effectively and efficiently manage these offenders, particularly the process of assigning defense attorneys to these often indigent defendants. METHODS: The current study examined the impact of an Indigent Defense Counsel (IDC) program designed to provide specially trained defense attorneys, and enhanced case management services to 257 indigent jail inmates with a qualifying, major mental health diagnosis (e.g., major depression). These offenders were compared to 117 similar offenders who did not receive these services, on both their length of stay in the jail, and their likelihood of recidivism after release to the community. RESULTS: Survival analyses revealed that program participants spent about 17 fewer days in jail; however, recidivism rates between groups, measured as return to the same county jail or as statewide re-arrest, did not differ. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that defendants with mental illness can potentially be managed effectively in the community, with little added risk to public safety and at potential savings in jail bed days/costs. Implications for the processing of indigent criminal defendants with mental illness are presented

How Much Variance in Offending, Self-Control and Morality can be Explained by Neighbourhoods and Schools? An Exploratory Cross-Classified Multi-Level Analysis

Criminological studies of contextual effects on adolescent offending have focused either on residential areas (considering effects of characteristics like disadvantage and collective efficacy) or on school characteristics (studying effects of organisation and social climate, for example). However, adolescents are simultaneously exposed to multiple contexts, and the influence of these contexts on their lives should be studied simultaneously rather than separately. The principal subject of this contribution lies in analysing to which extent there is unique neighbourhood level variation and unique school level variation in adolescent offending, and in two major and stable correlates of adolescent offending, morality and low self-control. Data are used from the Study of Peers, Activities and Neighbourhoods (SPAN), with 612 adolescents in various schools and neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. The results show that there is no unique neighbourhood level variance anymore after controlling for unique school level variance, while some variation at the school level still remains with regard to self-control and morality