Civil Mental Health Court<\/a>. The proposed criminal version would offer eligible defendants a treatment plan as an alternative to jail time.<\/p>\nNot every person charged with a crime would be eligible. Defendants would need a qualifying diagnosis, such as schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, and their charges would have to be low-level and nonviolent. Participation would also be voluntary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a Criminal Mental Health Court the person has to be able to voluntarily agree to participate in the mental health court versus going to jail,\u201d said Leslie Carpenter, who helped establish the state\u2019s first Civil Mental Health Court.<\/p>\n
The program would require participants to follow a treatment plan, including taking prescribed medications. Carpenter said other communities have seen results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people getting back to work. There are people who are living on their own independently for the first time. It\u2019s amazing to see that avenue open up for them when it wasn\u2019t happening before,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n
Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel attended a criminal mental health court proceeding in Scott County. He said participants appeared to be finding success.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did you see a respect for the judge but frankly some optimism in what that path forward looked like. I think they were also happy to be participating and see this as a way to better their life and hopefully migrate out of the system altogether,\u201d Kunkel said.<\/p>\n
If the program is established, Kunkel\u2019s office would be able to recommend candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour frontline jail staff, your jail social workers, your nurses, everybody else involved, they have that direct day-to-day contact with people and I think they\u2019re really in the best place to recommend who would be good candidates for the program,\u201d Kunkel said.<\/p>\n
Johnson County has $115,000 from a grant to help fund the program, which would cover approximately one-third of the total cost needed.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – Johnson County is considering adding a criminal mental health court program aimed at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[260972,260971,260967,260974,260966,18,135,19,17,260963,211452,260965,260964,260970,260969,260973,167,260968,502,87433,30515],"class_list":["post-618218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-assisted-outpatient-treatment","tag-brad-kunkel","tag-civil-mental-health-court","tag-criminal-justice-mental-health-treatment","tag-criminal-mental-health-court","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-johnson-co","tag-johnson-county","tag-johnson-county-civil-mental-health-court","tag-johnson-county-criminal-mental-health-court","tag-johnson-county-sheriff-brad-kunkel","tag-johnson-county-sheriffs-office","tag-leslie-carpenter","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-health-court-iowa","tag-mentalhealth","tag-serious-mental-illness","tag-severe-mental-illness"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}