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Tories must weigh mental health court benefits

Brandon Sun, The (Manitoba, Canada) - 6/22/2016

A plan to create a mental health court in Brandon that was announced by the former NDP government in Manitoba is under review by the Pallister government.

While that is not surprising, given that all spending decisions made by the previous government are under intense scrutiny by the new Tory regime, we urge the province to move forward with this initiative.

Toward the tail end of 2015, no doubt with a nod to the pending Manitoba election at the time,

then-attorney general Gord Mackintosh announced that Brandon would get a mental health court as part of a five-year strategy under the Restorative Justice Act.

As we reported yesterday, Mackintosh described the court at the time as an important commitment in the strategy, with the only question being how fast it could be introduced.

Currently, this province's only mental health court is held in Winnipeg, as part of a weekly sitting of the Provincial Court of Manitoba. The court was first introduced in 2012 as a means to divert people suffering from mental illness who have crossed paths with law enforcement officials into a treatment regime and away from the regular court system.

Such cases involving mental health issues on the part of the suspect have been clogging up Manitoba's courts for decades. The hope here has been to help those with mental illness find the help they need, and thereby avoid future confrontations with the law.

The mental health court spares mentally ill offenders from jail in favour of treatment. If that treatment is successful, charges are dropped or they receive non-jail sentences such as probation.

The general guidelines for the court suggest that people with "severe and permanent mental illness," such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, can apply -- especially those charged with relatively minor offences such as mischief, assault, theft or uttering threats.

Suspects who are charged with violent crimes, sexual offences or gang activity generally don't make the cut.

As we have stated before on this page, there is ample evidence to prove that these kinds of courts make a difference -- not only for the accused, but also for our criminal courts. Two years ago, a judge in Nova Scotia who presides over that province's mental health court told the CBC it has been a success in turning lives around, with an 86 per cent success rate.

Local court justices have lamented the lack of a similar mental health court system in Brandon, which, no doubt, was effective in helping to convince the former NDP government that expanding the program here was the next logical step.

Just because the expansion of the program to Brandon is under review, ManitobaJustice Minister and Attorney General Heather Stefanson told the Sun that it doesn't mean it won't happen.

Nevertheless, her suggestion that the Community Mobilization Westman program -- which helps to identify people and families in trouble and get them help before a crisis occurs -- is currently "meeting those needs" does throw a bit of cold water on hopes that the five-year target will be met.

While it may be a popular notion to demonize opposing political parties, especially those trounced at election polls, we suggest that not all NDP decisions were poor ones.

We urge our new government to carefully consider the benefits such a program would have to local court operations. If judges in Brandon have identified the need for a mental health court in this community, their assertion should not be dismissed out of hand, but rather given due weight.