CT chief justice aims to pilot ‘behavioral health court’ in New Haven

Connecticut Supreme Court Chief Justice Raheem Mullins announced this week the launch of a task force to design a pilot program for a specialized behavioral health court in the state. 

People with mental illness are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. A specialized court could help reduce the number of people who cycle through as a result of behavioral health challenges, Mullins said. 

“If we could get the people the help they need, we might prevent them from having to go through a lot of the rigmarole of the criminal justice system,” Mullins said. “That would better serve them. It would clear our dockets up for cases that are really the ones that should be tried.”

Only a handful of state systems across the country have specialized behavioral health courts, Mullins said. 

The models differ by state. In New York, for example, the mental health court system aims to reduce the frequency of incarceration by, when appropriate, linking people with community-based treatment instead of incarcerating them. The court also receives regular updates on treatment plans to monitor progress. 

Mullins said he doesn’t yet have a clear idea of exactly what Connecticut’s behavioral health court will look like, but that’s where he wants input from the task force, which includes more than two dozen members representing medical professionals, law enforcement, school leadership and addiction treatment specialists. 

Superior Court Judge Dan Klau will serve as the task force’s vice-chair, along with former Supreme Court Associate Justice Joette Katz. Klau’s daughter Miri died of an overdose in 2021 following struggles with mental illness and addiction.

Klau said he’d like to see a version of a behavioral health court that includes teams of people to help defendants, including care coordinators and peer counselors with lived experience.

“A well-designed, well-functioning mental health court is an inviting one, where people who are there as defendants feel that the whole team is supporting them and rooting for them and doing everything that the court team can do to help the person connect with the proper treatment, ensure that they follow through with the treatment,” Klau said.

Klau penned a 2017 op-ed in The Hartford Courant titled “My Daughter Needs Help, Not Jail: Mental Health, Addiction.” He said he hopes his family’s experiences can help others if their loved ones facing mental health challenges and addiction become involved with the criminal justice system.

“As a father, I have an intense desire to find a way that my daughter’s death has some positive meaning in life,” Klau said.

Also included on the task force are Mayor Justin Elicker and other local leaders from New Haven, where the pilot court will be located, though it will serve residents from other parts of the state as well. 

Elicker said the behavioral health court could be a way to actually address critical issues surrounding homelessness, mental health and addiction that many cities have been tackling for years. He also hopes the task force takes the opportunity to discuss how to balance getting people the help they need while protecting communities.

“I don’t think any of us want to put people that are struggling with real challenges in jail,” Elicker said. “But at the same time, we don’t have a lot of other tools available to us for accountability when there’s folks that are really disrespecting our communities.”

The task force’s first meeting is slated to take place in September. Mullins hopes to have a pilot court underway within a year and to eventually expand behavioral health courts to other parts of the state.

“My vision is that it’s successful and we can start rolling it out in other cities,” Mullins said.