Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) – Less than one year after it heard its first case, the Montgomery County Mental Health Court is at capacity and needs to be expanded according to Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy.
The mental health court was created by a task force charged in 2015 with coming up with a more effective way to handle defendants who committed minor crimes because they suffer from mental illness.
Nonviolent defendants who suffer from mental illness can ask to have their cases moved from criminal court to mental health court, which heard its first case in December of 2016.
McCarthy told News Channel 8 that somewhere between one-third to a half of the people who come into the criminal justice system suffer from mental illness. In many communities, there isn’t adequate funding for treatment for people who suffer from mental illness, including hospital beds for those in acute distress according to McCarthy.
“The criminal justice system has become the default system for dealing with mental health,” McCarthy said.
People who choose to appear before a judge in mental health court participate in supervised treatment plans instead of being sent to jail.
The court’s goal is to decrease the number of cases in the criminal justice system by treating the mental health problems that lead some people to commit crimes.
McCarthy will join members of the County Council at a news conference Thursday to press for continued funding to expand the program.
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