The impact of therapeutic jurisprudence on mental health court outcomes

Therapeutic jurisprudence is the hypothesis that the law itself can have therapeutic and/or anti-therapeutic consequences. Therapeutic jurisprudence is an important element in mental health courts because these specialty courts operate on the assumption that the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence reduce recidivism rates. Previous research has shown that mental health courts have been successful in reducing the rates of recidivism among mentally ill offenders. However, none of these studies, to date, have examined exactly what aspect of the court reduces these rates of recidivism and what makes them successful. The current study utilized a sample of 291 mentally ill criminal offenders participating in a mental health court to examine whether those participants who had the targeted therapeutic jurisprudence variable of communication with the judge had a reduction in recidivism rates, technical violations, and severity of new charges in comparison to those who did not. Analyses did not provide support for any of the hypotheses. However, females were shown to be have more communications with the judge, take longer in days to reoffend, and were more likely to be present in the courtroom than males. Implications and suggestions for future research examining therapeutic jurisprudence are discussed.