As the Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Court Operations and Planning for New York State, Judge Judy Harris Kluger is responsible for overseeing specialized courts across the state. In October 2007 she spoke with Center staff about New York’s new mental health court initiative.

Q: Have any lessons emerged from what’s happened so far?
I think the main lesson is the same one you find with a lot of our problem-solving courts: that the more people you bring to the table to involve in the planning and implementation of any new initiative, the greater chance there is of success. And that also means ongoing involvement and communication.

Q: Do you have any advice about establishing that kind of dialogue?
It’s really kind of easy as long as you’re willing to speak to people and let them know what you’re planning or what you’d like to plan. To me, it’s common sense that if you want an initiative to succeed, if you want to change the way business has been done up until now, you need to get all the players around the table and tell them what you’re interested in doing and listen to what they have to say.

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Judge Stephanie Rhoades has presided over the Anchorage Mental Health Court—the first mental health court in Alaska—since it was created in 1998. In May 2006 she spoke with Center for Court Innovation about the court.

Q: Overall, what would you say is most positive about mental health courts? What’s working?
So many of the individuals who end up recycling through the criminal justice system are disenfranchised. These folks are people who have lost all their natural supports. They don’t have advocates any longer, they don’t have family members to take them in, and they’ve burnt all their bridges with treatment and everyone else. They’re the tough customers, and their lifestyles are really dissonant with the medical model of mental health and substance abuse treatment delivery. So I think that the resource of a boundary-spanner and a linker, the case coordinator who can actually take the individual and hook them up with services appropriate to their condition is a tremendous resource. And what I’ve found is that the treatment system is far more likely to serve an individual who’s being monitored in the mental health court.

The outcome of all this is that people do engage in services, and then when they have their next mental health crisis, instead of defaulting to the police on the street they default to the treatment system. They know that they can resort to them in crisis and not be turned away.
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