HOPE Court gives hope to the mental health community
Summit County’s HOPE Court provides offenders with pre-diagnosed mental illnesses the opportunity to receive treatment and access to opportunities and offers them an alternative to jail and prison.
HOPE stands for (Healing, Opportunity, Progress & Empowerment), and, according to the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, the court aims to:
- “Improve life stability
- Reduce criminal recidivism
- Increase compliance with court orders
- Reduce hospitalization and incarceration
- Provide access to services
- Improve satisfaction with the court process.”
The specialty court was started by Alison Breaux, a judge in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas.
“I became a judge in 2017 and at that time we did not have a felony mental health court in Summit County,” Breaux said. “We had three municipal mental health courts in Akron, Barberton and Stow. We didn’t have anything in the felony level. So I set out to determine whether or not there was a need for something like this in Summit County. I met with a bunch of stakeholders who treat folks with mental health issues, as well as other departments within our court; probation, the prosecutor’s office, defense bar, ect. I just kind of put the feeler out, ‘Hey, do you think we need this?’ And everyone said yes, we do. We started it in September of 2018.”
There are certain qualifications for an offender to be accepted into the HOPE Court program.
“They have to meet legal and clinical criteria,” said Sean Lynch, a forensic manager at Community Support Services (CSS). Lynch also oversees the provision of services for CSS and all the clients CSS treats for court.
For a person to get referred to HOPE Court, that person would have had to commit a felony level crime.The court mainly accepts people who have committed a felony three, four or five, and there are some exceptions for those who commit a felony two. It does not accept the higher, or special, felonies, such as murder or rape, Lynch said.
Once the offender is recommended or referred to the program, a program coordinator, who is also the probation officer, goes over the criteria and decides if the offender fits the legal standards. On the clinical side, a certain pre-diagnosis is needed in order to be accepted, and this mental health diagnosis has to have had some impact on the crime committed, Lynch said.
There are also certain diagnoses that are accepted. Schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders are generally seen by the court. Bipolar 1 disorder, severe major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder also qualify, Lynch said.
According to Breaux, the HOPE Court program is broken up into four phases:
- Orientation: the person gets to know the court’s expectations, develops a treatment plan and meets the HOPE Court staff.
- Treatment: the treatment plan begins. This is the hardest phase because they are getting use to the expectations, Breaux said. They have to learn to live with their mental illness without abusing any sort of substances.
- Reintegration: this involves reintegrating into the community. Does the offender need to establish stable housing? Do they need a job or car? What are the steps they need to take to be successful in the community?
- Maintenance: the court looks at how well you are handling the treatment and reintegration and whether or not the offender can do all of it on their own. The offender does not have to check in with the court or their case manager as much. They are taking baby steps out of the program and preparing for graduation, Breaux said.
Once the offender completes all these phases, they can graduate.
“Graduation requires certain homework assignments, establishing a plan, establishing a crisis intervention plan,” Breaux said. “Things that’ll be tools that when we’re not around, you have them and if you need them, they’re there for you.”
Treatment and reintegration over the “normal” criminal justice system
“The prison system is our largest mental health institution for people with mental health conditions,” said Leslie Powlette Stoyer, the executive director for the National Alliance on Mental Illnesses (NAMI) in Summit County.
While temporary time in jain can be useful in getting someone back on track, the mental health treatment in a jail is substandard, Lynch said. The outcomes are better when a person is treated in the community or an actual hospital setting.
“Mental illness is still really not as well understood by correctional staff,” Lynch said. “There’s a lot of stigma associated with it. In general, if individuals are mentally ill at the time of their crime, they need better treatment, not necessarily incarceration.”
and Jail Inmates,” written by Doris J. James and Lauren E. Glaze.
Offenders with mental illnesses in the prison system may even have a higher chance of relapsing.
“The prison system is very different from the formulary out in the real world,” Powlette Stoyer said. “You’re going to see a higher recidivism rate with those individuals who are sitting in the system untreated with a mental health condition, rather than those who are diverted from that system and are able to get full wrap around services in the community.”
HOPE Court aims to combat the problem of recidivism by emphasizing treatment and reintegration in a community setting.
Since it began, HOPE Court has had 13 successful graduations.
“I would say the program has been helpful because, rather than sending somebody to prison for five years, two years, however long their sentence is, they can be treated more effectively in the community,” Lynch said. “Those who have successfully graduated the program have all had documented one-year sobriety. They’ve all maintained compliance with their medications. Most of them are working a job or are volunteering. They’re engaged again as productive citizens, which is ultimately what we want.”
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