How many mental-health courts are there?
Because specialized mental-health courts are continually being planned and developed, and others are closing due to funding cuts, the exact number of mental-health courts is not known. It is estimated that there are over 110 mental health courts currently. Congress promoted the development of mental-health courts with the passage in 2000 of America’s Law Enforcement and Mental Health Project Act, which instructed the attorney general to fund 100 demonstration projects. The resulting Mental Health Courts Grant Program, which relies on a flexible definition of what constitutes a mental-health court, provided grants to 23 courts in 2002 and will fund another 14 courts in 2003 (see Mental Health Consensus Project ). In 1996 Marion County, Indiana, started the Psychiatric Assertive Identification Referral/Response (PAIR) Program in Indianapolis, which many consider to be the nation’s first mental-health court. This initiative is a comprehensive pretrial, post-booking diversion system for me
