Judge Rhoades' March 2001 testimony to US Senate Appropriations Committee

Honorable Committee Members:

My name is Stephanie Rhoades. I am the innovator and one of two presiding Judges of the Anchorage District Court Coordinated Resources Project (CRP), also known as the Mental Health Court. This court is one of a handful of functioning therapeutic courts in the United States for mentally disabled misdemeanor offenders. It diverts voluntary low risk mentally disabled offenders from jail and into community-based treatment and supports and monitors compliance with treatment.

I want to thank the Committee members for your concern on behalf of mentally retarded individuals. I share your concern. Alaska has achieved the laudable goal of assuring that no mentally retarded persons are living in mental institutions. However, the process of deinstitutionalization has not inured to the benefit of all mentally disabled persons. Important community-based supports (housing, health care, employment, transportation, etc.) are lacking. The results are that many mentally disabled persons live in jails instead of mental institutions. As a judge, I see staggering numbers of people with mental disabilities become involved in the justice system. Our jails have become the mental institutions of yesterday. On a sample day in Alaska in 1997, 37% of inmates in state custody suffered from a mental disability.* Many were arrested for disorderly conduct or trespass while they were publicly acting out their mental disability. "Mercy arrests" are often well intended. However, the practice of criminalizing people because they are mentally or cognitively disordered is expensive and inhumane.

Your colleagues recognized this problem when passing "America's Law Enforcement and Mental Health Project" - S.1865 into law in 2000. This law authorizes grants for up to 100 jurisdictions across the United States to establish mental health courts. However, the law passed too late in the session to secure funding, and is not funded to date.

I urge you to fund this legislation. Mental Health Courts provide immediate intervention and diversion from jail and into community based services. Community based services, by contrast with jail, address underlying causes of involvement with the justice system and reduce the risk of further involvement. Initial studies of mental health courts show decreased legal and clinical recidivism. Fewer arrests and hospitalizations of individuals with disabilities reduce costs to the public. For Alaskan communities, funding this legislation could afford expansion of the successful Anchorage mental health court model to outlying areas. For the rest of the nation, funding this legislation could lead to the advent of other mental health courts - and to truly innovative and effective means of breaking the cycle of criminalization of the mentally disabled.

Respectfully Submitted,
Judge Stephanie Rhoades
Anchorage District Court
825 W. 4th Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99501
(907) 264-0666

* Data taken from Department of Corrections Report to the Alaska Mental Health Trust, February 2000.