Assembly Judiciary Committee
May 15, 2014
Position: Opposed
Dear Chairman John McKeon and esteemed members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee:
My name is Kathryn Cohen. I am a legislative and policy counsel for the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national non-profit organization based in Arlington, Virginia whose mission is to eliminate barriers to treatment for severe mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. While we recognize the honorable intentions behind Assembly Bill 1910, the Treatment Advocacy Center must urge an unfavorable report on the bill, because the provisions allowing for pre-trial release on the condition that a person adheres to mental health treatment are misguided and — in effect if not intent — further the criminalization of mental illness in New Jersey.
To be clear, the Treatment Advocacy Center is not opposed generally to laws that impose obligations on individuals with severe mental illness to adhere to treatment as a condition of remaining in the community. On the contrary, we have been a national leader in advocating for “assisted outpatient treatment (AOT)” laws, including the one enacted in New Jersey in 2009, which have been proven to save the lives of those caught in the revolving door of the mental health system. We also support mental health courts as a way to keep people with severe mental illness from facing criminal charges out of jail and into the treatment they desperately need. We have called for expansion of mental health court programs.
But from our perspective, one key to the effectiveness of both AOT in the civil court system and mental health courts in the criminal court system is that participants who falter in their recovery and fail to adhere to their court-ordered treatment plans do not face punishment for it. There must of course be consequences for non-adherence, but not punishment.
New Jersey’s civil law for outpatient services is called Involuntary Outpatient Commitment (IOC), an IOC participant who violates his treatment plan is not held in contempt of court. Instead, he is brought into an evaluation facility to determine if hospital commitment has become necessary. Pursuant to the IOC program, “if a patient fails to materially comply with the plan of outpatient treatment during the time the patient is assigned by a court to the outpatient treatment provider for services pursuant to a commitment to outpatient treatment,… the provider shall notify the court and screening services of the material noncompliance…and the patient shall be referred to a screening service for assessment to determine what mental health services are appropriate and where those services may be provided.http://tacreports.
I urge the Assembly Judiciary Committee to unfavorably report Assembly Bill 1910 because it furthers the criminalization of mental illness in New Jersey.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Cohen, Esq.
Legislative & Policy Counsel
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