Author Message to Future Instructors

Instructors, I am pleased and honored that you are considering using this resource in your own teaching. Creating this text was a labor of love for me, offered in the hope that it would reach as many students as possible. I have tried to leverage my many years of experience as a lawyer and as an advocate for people with disabilities to provide accurate information in a clear format, accessible – and hopefully interesting – to a wide array of students. I use this text to teach students in our college’s criminal justice program, and I am pleased each term that the course draws students from programs throughout the college, from paralegal to emergency medical technician to psychology.

For students in any of these areas of study, the text offers information about a historically marginalized group of people in our society, those who live with mental illness and disability, both generally and particularly as they interact with the criminal justice system. This book connects to standard criminal justice topics of criminal law, criminal courts, and law enforcement, but goes far beyond the standard curriculum in those courses to explore the history, needs, and problems associated with our focus population.

The text should enable instructors with expertise in criminal justice, law, or behavioral health to guide students through the material. Throughout the text, I have linked resources (such as the federal government agency and authority SAMHSA, and the mental health advocacy organization NAMI) that can provide instructors and students alike with additional and supporting information. Likewise, numerous videos are linked to provide additional perspectives, such as from people with lived experience of incarceration, mental illness, disability, substance use disorders, and recovery, as well as experience in the various career opportunities available and introduced in the final chapter.

The text is divided into ten chapters to align with the typical 10-week term at Oregon public colleges and universities. There is certainly room to expand any chapter (I would suggest Chapter 4, focused on criminalization of mental disorders, or Chapter 5, focused on crisis response and law enforcement) to fill a 12-week term. Throughout the text there are boxed sections highlighting areas of interest that could be extended, depending on student interest.

Integrated Openly Licensed Course Materials

This book includes openly licensed course materials that fully integrate with the open textbook. Anyone can retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute them. Best of all, future instructors can build on existing learning pathways that are aligned with textbook and chapter learning outcomes.

You can access openly licensed course materials in two ways:

• Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System Instructor Course Packs: A collection of aligned and accessible course materials shared by pilot instructors teaching at multiple Oregon institutions. Instructors designed each course pack with an equity lens in consultation with an instructional designer. In most cases, each course pack was revised with feedback from Oregon students and an advisory board of workforce members. Each course pack includes a complete course map, an instructor guide, and ancillary materials including weekly assignment prompts, rubrics, and suggested activities.
• Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System OER Commons Group: An ongoing repository of instructor-created course materials that integrate with the open textbook. Materials may include syllabi, assessments and assignments, lesson plans, activities, and entire course shells. Please note: not all OERC resources are reviewed for digital accessibility.

You are welcome to contribute your own openly licensed course materials that align with this textbook to the OERCommons Group. Thank you for building a more inclusive future for students and future educators!

Licenses and attributions for Instructor Resources

Author Message to Instructors by Anne Nichol under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Integrated Openly Licensed Course Materials by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.