Judge Manley and his colleagues also helped craft the new law. Judge Manley credits former California State Senator Jim Beall and former California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration for developing the program. The law provides a pathway for individuals with underlying mental health conditions to be diverted away from the jails, prisons, and state hospitals into community-based mental health programs. In 2019, Judge Manley received a new set of tools to further his mission-the passage of California Assembly Bill 1810. “Our court was very courageous at the time to let me do it,” he said. The judge proved the doubters and naysayers wrong, and he has never looked back. Twenty years ago, that correlation was not a consideration.īoth courts were extraordinary back then, with many doubting such a radical approach could work in the criminal justice system. Today, these health issues are recognized as co-occurring disorders. These individuals were already in the system, and the court was already providing treatment, resources, and services for them, so why not add a mental illness treatment component. So, Judge Manley created one of the nation’s first behavioral health courts (originally known as mental health treatment court). His rationale was simple: “We took a different approach which was to utilize treatment instead of incarceration.”įour years later, he noticed that many of the individuals who were sentenced and sent to his drug court for treatment, as part of their probation, had mental health issues and weren’t permitted to enter the program. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Stephen Manley is a risk taker and like most risk takers he bucked the norm when he founded one of the country’s first drug treatment courts in 1994. NAMI Santa Clara Community Resource Center.Special Needs Trusts ABLE Accounts WIPA.Financial Aid & Mental Health Disabilities.Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Services.Involuntary Treatment, Conservatorships.
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