Mental health court begins
Albany County program looks to help offenders into needed treatment
Albany County is starting its first mental health court, five years after County Executive Dan Mccoy first proposed one.
The pilot program will begin in Albany City Court, Mccoy said during a news conference on Friday.
Mccoy said it would help prevent “the criminalization of mental illness.”
“This initiative will be able to divert low-level, nonviolent offenders away from incarceration and into the treatment they need,” he said.
The program will open to 15 defendants who are charged with nonviolent misdemeanors. Once they are arraigned, the court will look at criteria to determine if a defendant is eligible for diversion to the mental health court. The determination will be made between social workers, prosecutors, the defendant’s attorney and City
Court Judge John Reilly, who is overseeing the program.
Stephen Giordano, the county’s mental health commissioner, said the program is meant to help defendants with serious mental illness that has “contributed to their progression of behavior.”
The county proposed a similar program in 2005 after a 27-year-old mother suffering from mental illness tried to kill her two children by giving them her medication. The county did begin screening cases for mental illness but didn’t establish a formal mental health court, according to Times Union archives.
The program is the result of work between the county, state courts, the district attorney’s office, and former state Supreme Court Judge Thomas Breslin, Mccoy said.
The state has 31 mental health courts, with several more in the planning stage. A study of the first one in Brooklyn found participants were 46 percent less likely to be rearrested than other defendants, according to the Center for Court Innovation, a criminal justice reform nonprofit.
Judge Edwina Mendelson, state deputy chief administrative judge for Justice Initiatives, said since the state began using mental health courts, more than 12,000 defendants have entered them and more than 6,000 successfully completed programs.
“They leave with the tools to take care of themselves, their families and meaningfully contribute to our communities,” she said.
As part of the court, defendants will be connected with counseling, addiction treatment, medication management or other treatment options. It is the second mental health court to open in the Capital Region, following Schenectady County’s, which began in 2004.
Public Defender Stephen Herrick, a former Albany County judge, said the program is long overdue.
When he first started working as a judge in city court in 1995, perhaps 25 percent of the cases he dealt with were public nuisance cases involving repeat offenders.
“It was just a cycle with the same people with moderate mental illness,” he said. “There was no tool available to divert them.”
It was more of the same years later when he oversaw drug court. He estimated 50 percent of the defendants also had moderate mental health issues.
The pilot program is meant to reach those defendants and get them the help that they need to stabilize their lives. Assistant public defenders are already clamoring to get some of their clients into the court, he added.
“What it will do is hopefully provide and alternative to cycling people right back out in to the community,” he said. “It’s been deluged with applications.”