Responding to Mental Illness

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference to announce the release of a set of recommendations from a combined City/State review panel that was created in the wake of recent police shootings of people with mental illness. The recommendations cover a broad range of topics. Of most immediate interest from our own narrow parochial perspective is the recommendation to expand mental health courts across the state. It is unclear how much political momentum (read: dollars) is behind this recommendation, but it is still a powerful endorsement of the problem-solving approach to cases involving mentally-ill defendants. The panel's report can be found here.