  Mental health disorders are particularly prevalent among those in the
criminal justice system and may be a contributing factor in recidivism. Using
North Carolina court cases from 1994 to 2009, this paper evaluates how mandated
mental health treatment as a term of probation impacts the likelihood that
individuals return to the criminal justice system. I use random variation in
judge assignment to compare those who were required to seek weekly mental
health counseling to those who were not. The main findings are that being
assigned to seek mental health treatment decreases the likelihood of three-year
recidivism by about 12 percentage points, or 36 percent. This effect persists
over time, and is similar among various types of individuals on probation. In
addition, I show that mental health treatment operates distinctly from drug
addiction interventions in a multiple-treatment framework. I provide evidence
that mental health treatment's longer-term effectiveness is strongest among
more financially-advantaged probationers, consistent with this setting, in
which the cost of mandated treatment is shouldered by offenders. Finally,
conservative calculations result in a 5:1 benefit-to-cost ratio which suggests
that the treatment-induced decrease in future crime would be more than
sufficient to offset the costs of treatment.
