ABSTRACT
Th is familiar scenario and the associated social and economic costs contributed to the national impetus to address what had become an untenable disconnection between the mental health access to service and the criminal justice system for persons with substantial mental illness who are not engaged in treatment and who disturb society. Diff erent etiologies were proposed as the basis for the problem-deinstitutionalization, techno-urbanization, ease of access to drugs-but regardless of cause, available models for care and adjudication were inadequate to break the cycle of recidivism. Beginning in the 1980s, eff orts that crossed boundaries between the mental health and criminal justice systems created new systems of services.
