All mental health treatment court programs in this state must be established and operate according to the following principles:

(1) The community and a broad-based group of stakeholders representing the criminal justice system, mental health, substance abuse treatment, and related systems guide the planning and administration of the mental health treatment court programs;
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Terms Used In Tennessee Code 16-19-107

  • Defendant: In a civil suit, the person complained against; in a criminal case, the person accused of the crime.
  • Defense attorney: Represent defendants in criminal matters.
  • Nonadversarial approach: means that the district attorney general and the defense attorney work together for the benefit of the mental health treatment program participants and the mental health treatment court program. See Tennessee Code 16-19-103
  • State: when applied to the different parts of the United States, includes the District of Columbia and the several territories of the United States. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
(2) Eligibility criteria are established to:

(A) Address public safety and consider a community’s treatment capacity, in addition to the availability of alternatives to pretrial detention for defendants with severe and persistent mental illnesses; and
(B) Take into account the relationship between mental illness and a defendant‘s offenses, while allowing the individual circumstances of each case to be considered;
(3) Participants are identified, referred, and accepted into mental health treatment court programs, and then linked to community-based service providers as quickly as possible;
(4) Terms of participation are clear, promote public safety, facilitate the defendant’s engagement in treatment, are individualized to correspond to the level of risk that the defendant presents to the community, and provide for positive legal outcomes for those individuals who successfully complete the program;
(5) Defendants fully understand the program requirements before agreeing to participate in a mental health treatment court program. Defendants are provided legal counsel to inform their decision concerning participation and subsequent decisions about program involvement. Mental health treatment court programs must use a nonadversarial approach. Disagreements between a district attorney general and defense attorney are resolved prior to court and not in the presence of the participants. Procedures exist in the mental health treatment court to address, in a timely fashion, concerns about a defendant’s competency if those concerns arise;
(6) Mental health treatment court programs:

(A) Connect participants to comprehensive and individualized treatment supports and services in the community; and
(B) Strive to use, and increase the availability of, evidence-based treatment and services;
(7) Health and legal information is shared in a way that protects potential participants’ confidentiality rights as mental health consumers and their constitutional rights as defendants. Information gathered as part of the participants’ court-ordered treatment program or services is safeguarded in the event that participants are returned to traditional court processing;
(8) A team of criminal justice and mental health staff and service and treatment providers receive special, ongoing training and help mental health treatment court participants achieve treatment and criminal justice goals by regularly reviewing and revising the court process;
(9) Criminal justice and mental health staff collaboratively monitor participants’ adherence to court conditions, offer individualized graduated incentives and sanctions, and modify treatment as necessary to promote public safety and participants’ recovery; and
(10) Data is collected and analyzed to demonstrate the impact of the mental health treatment court program, the mental health treatment court program’s performance is assessed periodically, the mental health treatment court program’s procedures are modified based on the results of the periodic performance assessments, the mental health treatment court program’s processes are institutionalized, and support for the mental health treatment court program in the community is cultivated and expanded.
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