Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnographic Analysis of Care and Criminal Law in California's Mental Health Courts

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With 2.2 million Americans in prisons and jails, the United States has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. In light of emerging public concerns about the cost, efficacy, and dignity of mass incarceration, counties and states have developed innovative policies designed to reduce the number of individuals behind bars. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Brown v. Plata) that California's practices of mass incarceration were unconstitutional, and that the "cruel and unusual" punishment of being subject to California's overcrowded prisons was particularly difficult for inmates with mental illnesses. Following this court decision, California has experimented with alternatives in criminal justice infrastructure. One such experiment has been the development of mental health courts, which are criminal courtrooms that aspire to take convicted individuals with mental illnesses out of jails and place them in community psychiatric care. Mental health courts structurally differ from other criminal courtrooms in that prosecution and defense attorneys collaborate with psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and the judges to monitor offender' progress towards mental health. In this context,offenders become "clients" of the courtroom. They are required to follow a court-developed treatment plan, and if they deviate from that plan, the judge may return them to jail. The research supported by this award asks what these alternative legal programs might be accomplishing in addition to the promotion of decarceration? Are there side effects or unintended consequences? Better understanding of the practices and effects of mental health courts is critical for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of programs designed to redress mass incarceration.Princeton University doctoral candidate Jessica Cooper, with the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Davis, will conduct the research in the mental health courts of Santa Clara and San Francisco counties in California. She will carry out ethnographic observations in the two courtrooms and in the court-sponsored clinics through which offender-clients receive care. She will supplement these observational data with interviews of courtroom and clinical professionals, as well as clients, and with analyses of court records and transcripts. These data will allow her to identify and analyze the relationships that develop between clients and state representatives to investigate exactly how these relationships work to combine care and control in order to provide public health services through a system designed for criminal justice. Findings from Cooper's research also will illuminate the degree to which structural change in the criminal justice system at the local level may affect more general extra-local relationships, as well, such as the relationships between mental health court professionals, their clients, and multiple levels of government.