Animal Hoarding 121 The recent inclusion of Hoarding Disorder in the DSM-5 may lead to greater use of ‘mental health’ or ‘problem solving’ courts to address the animal hoarding rather than conventional animal cruelty criminal proceedings Such courts maintain a specialized docket established for defendants with mental illness that substitutes a problem-solving approach for the traditional adversarial criminal court processing Participants are identified through mental health screening and assessments and voluntarily participate in a judicially supervised treatment plan developed jointly by a team of court staff and mental health professionals This approach may be useful for some animal hoarding cases (Muller-Harris 2010), however, a therapeuticallyoriented intervention or negotiation may not work with certain types of hoarders who are exploitative, irrational or uncooperative Sentencing Animal protection and mental health professionals should advise the courts on the desired components of sentencing in animal hoarding cases Without such guidance, some judges are inclined to make naïve recommendations, such as requiring a convicted hoarder to community service at an animal shelter A more egregious lapse in judgement is to order any apparently healthy animals returned to the offender, presumably under the assumption that because those animals have not yet shown obvious signs of physical harm, they are not suffering or at risk The first objective is to ensure that animals are safe and receive any needed medical or behavioral treatment, which is usually accomplished by removing animals from the harmful conditions in which they have been found, if this has not already been accomplished by a voluntary surrender or other pre-conviction court orders Often courts will also issue a ‘nocontact’ order prohibiting the convicted hoarder from owning, possessing or being in proximity to animals for the duration of probation It may be desirable to allow the hoarder to keep a small number of neutered animals that are subject to periodic inspection by animal control authorities In the case of rescue hoarders posing as a formal organization, the courts may require the dissolution of the organization in addition to the surrender of the animals Since hoarding cases places a great financial burden on responding agencies, it is desirable for courts to order reasonable restitution for these costs However, even when ordered, such restitution is rarely paid (Berry et al 2005)