Document Type
Article
Keywords
Serious mental illness, Alternative to incarceration, Assertive community treatment, Competency to stand trial, Pretrial detainees
Disciplines
Social Work
Abstract
In the United States and elsewhere around the world, people with serious mental illness (SMI) are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Clinical interventions to divert such individuals out of correctional settings, including Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), have been shown to reduce rates of criminal justice recidivism when modified to allow for the use of court sanctions to encourage treatment adherence. However, these interventions are noted to be underutilized as alternative to incarceration (ATI) programs. This paper summarizes the results of a retrospective cohort study conducted in a New York State forensic psychiatric hospital of 87 pretrial detainees admitted after being found incompetent to stand trial between January 2019 and January 2022. Of these, 49 patients were referred to an ACT team that served as an ATI program. The study outcomes noted that patients referred to this ACT team were 20% less likely to remain in pretrial detention than those that were not. Moreover, patients referred to the ACT program were also 34% more likely to be granted an ATI plea bargain in the community that did not involve serving a prison term. These results suggest that pretrial detainees with SMI are more likely to be granted an ATI program that offers more intensive treatment services such as ACT, due to the capability of such programs to also provide more intensive outreach and community supervision than traditional outpatient mental health service providers.
Publication Title
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry
Volume
94
Article Number
1048
Publication Date
2024
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2024.101990
Language
English
Peer Reviewed
1
Recommended Citation
Zampella, Brian; Talton, Simone; Lam, Jonathan; Khan, Anzalee; Bryant, Tuborah; and Kunz, Michal, "Assertive community treatment as an alternative to incarceration for American pretrial detainees" (2024). Social Service Faculty Publications. 38.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/gss_facultypubs/38
Version
Published
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
