MacArthur Mental Health Court Study, California, Minnesota, Indiana, 2005-2008 (ICPSR 38275)
Version Date: May 21, 2025 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Policy Research Associates;
Henry J. Steadman, Policy Research Associates;
Allison Redlich, George Mason University
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR38275.v2
Version V2 (see more versions)
Summary View help for Summary
The MacArthur Mental Health Court (MHC) project is a longitudinal study examining the effectiveness of these specialty courts in reducing recidivism, reducing the number of jail days and stays, and increasing access to community mental health and substance use treatment. The study included four data collection sites (two in California, one in Minnesota, and one in Indiana), two samples (newly enrolled MHC clients and a comparison sample of offenders with mental illness in the traditional criminal justice system), two interview time points (baseline and 6-month follow-up), and the collection of objective criminal justice and court data up to 18 months post-enrollment in the MHC/post-arrest.
This study was originally published through OpenICPSR.
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Funding View help for Funding
Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, some of the data files in this collection are restricted from general dissemination. To obtain these restricted files researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of a Restricted Data Use Agreement.
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- This study was originally published through OpenICPSR.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of mental health courts in reducing recidivism, reducing the number of jail days and stays, and increasing access to community mental health and substance use treatment.
Sample View help for Sample
There were two samples: Mental health court (MHC) and treatment as usual (TAU) samples. The MHC sample were newly enrolled clients in the four participating courts who provided informed consent to participate. The TAU sample were newly arrested offenders with mental health problems in the jails of the same four cities as the courts, who also provided informed consent. In addition, the TAU sample had to be eligible for the MHC (criteria relating to criminal charges and mental health) but could not have been referred to, or rejected from the MHC.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Newly enrolled mental health court (MHC) participants in four locations; Newly arrested offenders with mental health issues in four locations.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Self-report interviews at baseline and 6-months later
Administrative court records
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
Likert Scales; Colorado Symptoms Inventory; Insight and Treatment Attitudes Questionnaire.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2022-03-17
Version History View help for Version History
2025-05-21 This collection has been updated to mitigate a possible disclosure risk in the data and is being re-released with ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats (i.e., SAS, SPSS, Stata, and R), the original Data Collection Instrument, and an ICPSR codebook.
2022-03-17 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
Notes
These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?
One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.