Criminal Justice and Criminology Assistant Professor Alyssa Sheeran‘s project, Beyond the Bench: Assessing the Effectiveness of Milwaukee County’s Mental Health Court Docket, received 2026-2027 funding from UW-Milwaukee’s Advancing Research and Creativity (ARC) grant program.
Through this project, Sheeran will conduct a mixed-methods evaluation to analyze competency cases prior to the implementation of the mental health court docket and following implementation of the docket. Qualitative interviews will also be conducted with team members to better understand docket efficiency, strengths, and areas of improvement.
This will be the first evaluation of Milwaukee County’s Mental Health Court Docket to determine whether the implementation of the docket has addressed the competency crisis currently facing Milwaukee County.