1. Filling in the Gaps: Specialized Mental
Disability Law and Policy
Training for Criminology Practitioners,
Scholars and Professionals
Heather Ellis Cucolo
Founder and Co-owner of Mental Disability Law and
Policy Associates (MDLPA)
Adjunct Professor at NYLS
Contact: hcucolo@mdlpa.net

2. Intersection Between MDL and
Criminology
O Criminology is the scientific study of the nature,
extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior.
O Criminology explains the origin, extent, and
nature of crime in society.
O Mental disability law issues are present in a vast
range of criminal justice areas.
O Criminal justice refers to agencies of social
control and overlaps with criminology.
O Criminology is an interdisciplinary science.

3. Crime statistics
O Forty-eight percent of mentally ill inmates are
charged with drug-trafficking-related crimes.
The majority are imprisoned on their second or
third offense — approximately one-third of
inmates report having three to ten prior
incarcerations.

4. Jails and Prisons
O Approximately 20 percent of inmates in jails and 15
percent of inmates in state prisons have a serious
mental illness. Based on the total number of
inmates, this means that there are approximately
356,000 inmates with serious mental illness in jails
and state prisons. This is 10 times more than the
approximately 35,000 individuals with serious mental
illness remaining in state hospitals.
O The mentally ill are also incarcerated for as many as
five months longer than those without mental illness.

5. Inmates with mood or mental
disturbances

6. Confinement according to illness
O Across the nation, individuals with severe mental illness
are three times more likely to be in a jail or prison than in
a mental health facility and 40 percent of individuals with
a severe mental illness will have spent some time in their
lives in either jail, prison, or community corrections.
O It also appears that the individuals being incarcerated have
more severe types of mental illness, including psychotic
disorders and major mood disorders than in the past. In
fact, according to the American Psychiatric Association,
on any given day, between 2.3 and 3.9 percent of inmates
in state prisons are estimated to have schizophrenia or
other psychotic disorder; between 13.1 and 18.6 percent
have major depression; and between 2.1 and 4.3 percent
suffer from bipolar disorder.

7. Types of Mental Issues Among
State and Federal Inmates

8. MDLPA courses offered
O Survey of Mental Disability Law
O International Human Rights & Mental Disability Law
O Sex Offenders
O Custody Issues and Family Law Court
O Therapeutic Jurisprudence
O Mental Health Issues in Jails and Prisons
O Mental Illness, Dangerousness, the Police Power and Risk
Assessment
O Forensic Reports, the Role of Experts, and Forensic
Ethics
O Race, Class, Gender and Culture in Mental Disability Law
O Mental Disability in the Criminal Law Process
O Trauma and Mental Disability

9. Survey of Mental Disability Law:
MDL
O Examine the civil and constitutional bases of mental
disability law in such areas as civil commitment; institutional
rights (with specific focus on the right to refuse treatment);
and deinstitutionalization, aftercare, and federal statutory
rights.
O Explore all aspects of the role of mental disability in the
criminal trial process, including criminal incompetencies;
insanity defense; federal sentencing guidelines; and the death
penalty.
O Study the meanings of “sanism” and “pretextuality,”
the history of mental disability law and why and how it has
developed as it has; and most importantly, why judges and
fact finders decide mental disability law cases the way they
do, to facilitate our predictions of future trends and
outcomes.

10. Survey of Mental Disability Law:
Criminology
O The Interactionist View of Crime
O This position holds 1) People act according to their
own interpretations of reality, 2) People observe they
way others react either positively or negatively, and 3)
People reevaluate and interpret their own behavior
according to the meaning and symbols they have
learned from others
O There is not objective reality, according to
interactionists
O The definition of crime reflects the preferences and
opinions of people who hold social power
O Crime is socially defined by moral entrepreneurs

11. International Human Rights and
Mental Disability Law: MDL
O Examine the relationship between constitutional
mental disability law and international human rights
law, primarily as that relationship deals with
questions of legislative drafting, legal representation,
institutional treatment, community care, and forensic
mental health systems.
O The role of “sanism” and “pretextuality” in
understanding developments in this area and the use
of institutional psychiatry as a means of suppressing
political dissension and the globalization of forensic
disability law.

12. International Human Rights and
Mental Disability Law: Criminology
O Ability to use comparative and international
perspectives to explore the key issues in
criminology.
O The social context of crime as it applies to non-
U.S. social construction.
O How the social nature of crime and punishment
is controlled by international legal and social
policy.

13. Sex Offenders: MDL
O Review contemporary public policy regarding sexually coercive
behavior.
O Examine and evaluate these controversial legal approaches,
as well as alternative approaches to the societal effort to
address sexual violence.
O Examine the current state of social science research into
sexual violence, including etiology, classification, treatment,
supervision, recidivism, and risk assessment
O Examine legislative approaches to sexual and attempt to
assess their efficacy as part of a system for addressing sexual
violence in society.
O Address issues at a variety of levels of abstraction,
examining the morality of the laws, their implications for
public policy, and the fight against sexual violence, as well as
the practical skills and knowledge necessary for lawyers and
other professionals to operate effectively.

14. Sex Offenders: Criminology
O Criminologists study both criminology and deviance to
understand the nature and purpose of law.
O Criminologists help lawmakers alter the content of
criminal law to respond to the changing times.
O Sex offender registration.
O Criminal Statistics
O Measuring the amount and trends of criminal activity,
O Creating valid and reliable measurements of criminal
activity.
O Labeling theory
O argues that once a person commits a first criminal act
and gets processed in the system, they are labeled
negatively as a criminal.

15. Custody Issues and Family Law Court
(juvenile offenders):MDL
O Cover the full range of issues related to custody
(including issues specifically related to children with
special needs), adoption, marriage dissolution, foster
care, domestic abuse and guardianships as they relate
to persons with mental disabilities. Consider the
special issues related to juvenile commitments to
psychiatric institutions (and treatment of juveniles in
such facilities); competency; as well as other issues
related to the criminal trials of juveniles with mental
disabilities.

16. Custody Issues and Family Law Court
(juvenile offenders): Criminology
O Developing theories of Crime Causation
O Psychological view contends crime is a function
of personality, learning, or cognition
O Biological view incorporates biochemical, genetic,
and neurological linkages to crime
O Social Control Theory
O Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson wrote
that the principal cause of deviant behaviors is
ineffective child rearing, which produces people
with low self-control.

17. Therapeutic Jurisprudence: MDL
O Explores the proposition that all aspects of the legal
system (and all roles played by judicial actors) have some
therapeutic impact on mentally disabled individuals who
are litigants or are the subject of litigation. Focuses on the
empirical issues and social assumptions underlying the
major mental disability legal doctrines developed the past
two decades in such areas as involuntary civil
commitment law, treatment of juveniles in the mental
disability process, rights of the institutionalized mentally
disabled, the trial of mentally disabled criminal
defendants, the role of the mentally disabled as “third
parties” in tort actions, and scope of the
psychotherapistpatient privilege.

18. Therapeutic Jurisprudence:
Criminology
O Victimology
O Examines the critical role of the victim in the
criminal process
O Creating probabilities of victimization risk
O Victim culpability or precipitation of crime
O Designing services and programs

19. Mental Health Issues in Jails and
Prisons: MDL
O Offers a comprehensive overview of the mental
disability law issues in correctional settings (jails &
prisons). Topics include the historical development
of the constitutional right to correctional health and
mental health care, issues involving staffing, transfer,
record keeping, suicide prevention, the significance
of professional standards, the relationship between
correctional mental health care and community
systems of care, monitoring, informed consent, risk
assessment, and privatization of services.

20. Mental Health Issues in Jails and
Prisons: Criminology
O The methods used to control criminal behavior
O General Deterrence Theory
O Conflicting goals of the mental health and
criminal justice systems make it difficult to
understand and respond to mentally ill
offenders and to understand the relationship
between mental illness and crime.

21. Mental Illness, Dangerousness, the Police
Power and Risk Assessment: MDL
O Discuss the relationship among mental illness,
dangerous behavior, and the police power; the ability
of mental health professionals to predict
dangerousness; and the significance of risk
assessment instruments.
O Consider issues in a variety of settings, including
involuntary civil commitments, right to refuse
treatment, insanity defense acquittee retention
hearings, sex offender status hearings, sentencing
cases, death penalty “future dangerousness”
inquiries, and death penalty mitigation hearings.

22. Mental Illness, Dangerousness, the Police
Power and Risk Assessment: Criminology
O Criminal Typology-necessary to understand, identify,
and respond to crime.
O Typologies of crime and criminals provide
information with which to make decisions, policies,
practices, and laws. Typologies are used at all stages of
the criminal justice process.
O The criminal justice system cannot respond to crime
with a “one size fits all” approach. Sanctions,
management strategies, treatment approaches, and
public safety policies and practices are highly
dependent on differentiation of types of crimes and
criminals.

23. Forensic Reports, the Role of
Experts, and Forensic Ethics: MDL
O Explore reports that are prepared by forensic
experts for use by lawyers (both pretrial and at trial),
and with the ethical issues that are posed when such
experts interact with the legal system.
O The focus will be on the full range of issues
involving forensic experts and the mental disability
law system: the role of mental disability in the
criminal trial process and in the family law process.
Therapeutic jurisprudence implications will be also
be explored, as will a consideration of the varying
ethical codes that apply to the different mental
health professions.

24. Forensic Reports, the Role of Experts, and
Forensic Ethics: Criminology
O Psychiatric criminology
O Theories that are derived from the medical
sciences, including neurology, and the, like other
psychological theories, focus on the individual as
the unit of analysis. Psychiatric theories form the
basis of psychiatric criminology.

25. Race, Class, Gender and Culture
in Mental Disability Law: MDL
O The confluence of mental disability, gender, race, culture,
and class often result in unique legal issues that have a far-
reaching impact on virtually every aspect of their lives.
O This course will focus on the unique legal issues that these
individuals face because of these relationships and examine
the impact of the interrelationship of these factors.
O Forensic mental health topics including incompetency to
stand trial, the insanity and other related defenses,
sentencing, and related issues, and the death penalty;
domestic violence; abuse and neglect; trafficking of women
with mental disabilities for slavery; barriers to the availability
of community-based benefits and supports and services,
including mental health and general medical care; and access
to public accommodations.

26. Race, Class, Gender and Culture in Mental
Disability Law: Criminology
O Developing theories of crime causation
O Sociological view includes social forces such as poverty,
socialization, and group interaction
O Conflict theory focuses on the conflict in
society between rich and poor, management and
labor, whites and minorities.
O Criminal law reflects and protects established
economic, racial, gendered, and political power and
privilege

27. Trauma and Mental Disability: MDL
O Treatment of trauma-related disabilities in civil and
criminal courts.
O Special focus on children who experience domestic
violence and abuse in foster care or in juvenile
detention, which results in trauma-induced mental
disability.
O Trauma-induced mental disabilities related to
veterans who return from the Iraq war with PTSD
and end up in the criminal justice
O Issues related to women with trauma-induced mental
disabilities as a result of rape, abuse, trafficking, and
war, and as refugees and prisoners/inmates, both in
the civil and criminal context.

28. Trauma and Mental Disability
O Subarea of criminology concerned with the role
of social forces in shaping criminal law.

29. Mental Disability in the Criminal
Law Process: MDL
O Explores in depth the relationship between mental disability and
the criminal trial process
O all aspects of the criminal incompetency status;
O the insanity defense;
O sentencing
O institutionalization and release policies;
O the right of forensic patients to refuse antipsychotic
medications;
O the role of mental disability evidence;
O the death penalty (mitigation, predictions of future
dangerousness, executability of persons with mental
retardation, and competency to be executed).

30. Mental Disability in the Criminal Law
Process: Criminology
O Substantive criminal law defines crime and punishment
O Penology
O Correction and control of known criminal offenders
O Capital punishment is used as social control
O Mandatory sentences are aimed at social control and
prevention of criminal acts.
O Criminal Behavior Systems
O Involves crime types and patterns
O Crime typologies involve different types of crime and
criminals

31. The use of typologies in the
criminal justice system

32. Contact
O Visit our website at www.mdlpa.net
O Like us on Facebook
www.facebook.com/MentalDisabilityLawandPol
icy