CRIM 2025 - Mental Health and Criminal Justice

4.5 Credits

Students focus on how the criminal justice system and mental health system operate in conjunction with each other, and how conflicts can arise when a mentally ill person enters the nexus of justice and healthcare. Topics include history of mental health, law enforcement responses to mental health crises, hospital commitments, court processes, correctional treatment, and mental health issues in community.

Prerequisites: (1) CRIM 1010

Lecture Hours: 4.5
Lab Hours: 0.0
Internship Hours: 0.0
Clinical or Practicum Hours: 0.0

Course Objectives

Describe the mental health and criminal justice system.
Explain the changes in the treatment of the mentally ill from the early years to current years.
Analyze the brain and how it guides our behavior as human and social beings.
Explain the biological, medical, psychological, and sociological information essential to understanding mental disorders and societal reaction to them.
Identify “best practices for first responders and street encounters with mentally ill persons, victims, perpetrators, and witnesses.
Compare involuntary and voluntary commitment and procedures.
Analyze legal judicial competency issues and the criminal trial.
Analyze mentally ill defendants and their use of defenses of insanity and temporary diminished capacity.
Summarize correctional treatment of the mentally ill.
Identify special considerations regarding juveniles and mental illness.
Present observations about mental health issues in the community.
Present information for programs that advocate human rights and support at-risk groups for the mentally ill.

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