VERA Institute of Justice

                      The potential criminal law policy changes that could be implemented here in Colorado on a German or Dutch model to address the high number of people with mental illness in Colorado jails & prisons would require statutory changes.      

                        Of course, Colorado could just comply with Federal Disability Civil Rights Laws Now and bring Assertive Community Treatment and Housing to Scale AND that would go a long, long way to addressing the high proportion of people with mental illness in Colorado jails and prisons.                         
Mentally ill offenders: Because of the high proportion of mentally ill offenders in the U.S. prison population, there was deep interest among project participants to learn how European systems deal with this population.

In Germany, this topic was not discussed because convicted mentally ill offenders are sent to psychiatric hospitals—not prison— and therefore fall outside the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. 

The Netherlands has a well-developed system for dealing with mentally ill offenders in clinical facilities run by the Ministry of Justice—known as Forensic Psychiatric Care Institutions.

Dutch law determines criminal responsibility on a multiple-point scale, rather than the all-or-nothing approach employed in the U.S; defendants can be declared entirely or partially unaccountable for an offense and sent to one of these special clinics for treatment, so long as there is a connection between the alleged conduct and an offender’s mental disorder.

This determination is done through an extensive assessment that is conducted by a multi-disciplinary team that includes a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, behavioral therapist, and a lawyer or judge.

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