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Professor Richard C. Boldt has published “Criminalization and Normalization: Some Thoughts About Offenders with Serious Mental Illness” in the Florida Law Review Forum. In response to Professor E. Lea Johnston’s “Reconceptualizing Criminal Justice Reform for Offenders with Serious Mental Illness,” Professor Boldt contends that “the complex associations between serious mental illness and several of the key risk factors for criminal system involvement—most notably substance misuse—impact the design of effective programs intended to reduce reoffending.” Professor Boldt asserts that specialized, integrated programs combining mental health treatment and other interventions should be reserved “for offenders with serious mental illness who present the highest risk of reoffending. Others, who are lower risk, are strong candidates for diversion from the criminal system altogether, assuming that appropriate services in the community can be made available on a consistent basis.”
Professor Boldt accepted the invitation to write a response to Professor Johnston’s article because he is an enthusiastic proponent of her work. Professor Johnston’s scholarship on mental health courts aligns with Professor Boldt’s work on problem-solving courts more generally. Both scholars are fairly critical of specialty criminal courts for offenders who have behavioral health problems. About a year and a half ago, both professors provided testimony before the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, District of Columbia Advisory Committee, in which they cautioned against efforts to expand the use of mental health courts. These courts rest on a set of premises that Professor Johnston terms the “criminalization thesis.” This thesis sees a direct causal connection between severe mental illness and criminal conduct. Professor Johnston’s work argues that, in most instances, this thesis does not hold and that most offenders with severe mental illness become enmeshed in the criminal legal system for the same reasons as other offenders. She terms this alternative view the “normalization thesis.”
Professor Boldt’s response in the Florida Law Review Forum, while generally accepting Professor Johnston’s insight, seeks to complicate the picture somewhat, especially with respect to offenders who have co-occurring substance use disorders and severe mental illnesses. Nevertheless, like Professor Johnston, Professor Boldt views diversion to treatment outside of the criminal legal system as a much better approach for most offenders with behavioral health problems and would reserve problem-solving courts and other hybrid punishment/treatment interventions for the small group of offenders who are at the highest risk for reoffending.
Find the full text here.