California's New Mental Health Court Starting Off Slow

On The Merits

When California's new mental health courts were getting started, the debate centered on whether they had too much power–or too little.

Now, roughly six months in, the state is discovering a new flaw: too few people are using them.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Law reporter Maia Spoto talks about why California's Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment, or CARE, Courts, have had such an underwhelming start. Also, what this means for the state's governor, Gavin Newsom (D), who invested a large amount of political capital into them. We also hear from one of the judges helping to set up a CARE Court in Orange County, who talks about the large amount of manpower needed to adjudicate these special types of cases.

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