Are Judges Trained to Deal with Mental Illness?

 ⚖️ Are Judges Trained to Deal with Mental Illness?

Spoiler: No they are NOT! And that’s a problem

                                                 Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, who was arrested on Aug. 22 after he fatally stabbed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska. (abc.com) 

The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered hallucinations and paranoia, his sister Tracey Brown said. She said her brother told her multiple times the government had implanted a chip in him. (cnn.com) 

What is justice in this case? Death penalty? life in prison? Life in a Hospital for the criminally insane? 

The history of this man is woven with chances to protect society and get him help but time and time again the system failed to do both or did it fail? Failure, in this case means you have access to options that lead to success and you do not use them. Yes, he could have been in prison and off the streets but that is not success or helping him that is simple confinement!

In courtrooms across America, judges wield enormous influence over the lives of people living with mental illness. They decide who gets treatment, who gets punished, and who gets ignored. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most judges aren’t trained to recognize mental illness, let alone respond to it with appropriate compassion and arriving at the right sentencing.

🧠 The Blind Spot in the Bench

Judges are legal experts, or they clam to be, but they are not mental health clinicians. Their training focuses on laws, freedoms, statutes, evidence, precedent, and courtroom procedure. Mental health training? That’s often relegated to a few optional seminars or briefings. And yet, every day, they encounter defendants, victims, and even attorneys navigating trauma, dissociation, psychosis, or emotional dysregulation.

        In the U.S., about 44% of people in jails and 37% of people in state and federal                prisons have a mental illness, a significant overrepresentation compared to the 18%        of the general population with a mental illness. People with mental illness are more            likely to be arrested and overrepresented in the criminal justice system...

Without adequate training, symptoms get misread. A trauma survivor’s flat affect might be mistaken for lack of remorse. A manic episode could be seen as contempt. Dissociation might look like defiance. The result? Harsher punitive outcomes for people who need care, while upholding laws. 

🧩 The Systemic Disconnect

Even in jurisdictions with mental health courts or diversion programs, the default courtroom is still a place where psychological complexity is flattened into legal categories. Judges are expected to make decisions that hinge on mental health competency, intent, risk without the tools to interpret what they’re seeing. 

And let’s not forget: judges themselves are human. Many experience vicarious trauma from years of exposure to violence, grief, and systemic failure. But judicial culture rarely allows space for vulnerability. The robe is supposed to protect them like dome force field but it doesn’t.

🌱 Signs of Change

There are glimmers of progress. Some states have begun offering interdisciplinary training for judges—modules on trauma, psychiatric symptoms, and judicial wellness. These programs teach judges how to recognize mental illness, respond with empathy, and avoid retraumatizing those who come before them, But these efforts are patchy, underfunded, and far from universal. 

We need more than good intentions. We need reform.

🔄 What Needs to Shift

If we want justice to be more than a legal ideal, we must:

• Fund alternative incarceration programs for the mentally ill.  
• Mandate trauma-informed training for judges, attorneys, and court staff
• Expand access to mental health courts and diversion programs
• Integrate clinical consultation into courtroom decision-making
• Support judicial wellness, recognizing that burnout and bias go hand in hand. 
• Mandate required yearly mental health evaluations for all court personnel. 

💬 Why This Matters

Mental illness doesn’t make someone less deserving of justice for themselves or the victims of the crimes they may commit. It makes justice more complicated and maybe even more urgent. 

When say that we need judges that are trained to see the full mental health in the humanity of those before them, the courtroom becomes a place of possibility, not just punishment. While I agree with that idea if we do not develop alternative JUSTICE based options than all the training in the world will not fix the problem.  

We don’t need judges to be therapists. We need them to be informed, compassionate, and willing to learn that some people are a danger to themselves and others and need intervention early and ongoing. 

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If this resonates, feel free to share or comment. And if you’re a fellow advocate, therapist, or reformer—what have you seen in your own work? Let’s keep the conversation going.