Last year, Massachusetts passed legislation representing the most significant changes to the state’s criminal justice system in decades. This legislation took concrete steps to incentivize good behavior in prison, divert people to treatment and programming as an alternative to incarceration, and strengthen community supervision.
Before these units existed, people experiencing a mental health crisis who came into contact with police were often taken to jail, which caused crowding in county jails that are simply not equipped to provide the kind of care and treatment that crisis stabilization units can.
“We have just finished the first module of the course and can see the commitment and determination mounting as the women in our class advance through each session,” said Deborah Simmons, founder of The Reentry Initiative, which is delivering CBI-CA to participants in the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility in Colorado.
“Stepping Up was born out of conversations with community leaders, law enforcement officials, and behavioral health specialists, who told us that the number of people with mental illnesses coming into their jails was a top challenge for them,” said Megan Quattlebaum, director of the CSG Justice Center.
This symposium is for law enforcement professionals to learn from experts in the field about resources and best practices when developing comprehensive officer safety and wellness strategies.
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This webinar will feature counties that have implemented policies and practices that identify frequent utilizers of emergency rooms, shelters, crisis services, and the justice system and will show how this information can be used to connect people with appropriate treatment and services.
This webinar will outline the benefits to sheriffs of engaging in the Stepping Up initiative and share concrete ideas on how sheriffs can help lead this work in their counties.
In this webinar, CSG Justice Center staff explain the training and technical assistance opportunities and resources available to grantees, and staff from the Bureau of Justice Assistance provide an overview of the post-award grant management requirements.
In this webinar, presenters discuss six questions that law enforcement executives should consider when developing or enhancing Police-Mental Health Collaborations in their jurisdiction and share practical approaches that have been implemented in the field.
This webinar highlights two jurisdictions—the State of Oklahoma and Douglas County, Nebraska—and explains how they used Collaborative Comprehensive Case Plans to enhance their case planning processes and promote recovery, successful diversion from the criminal justice system to treatment, or reentry to the community among their participants.
This webinar focusses on the programming developed specifically for veterans in two jurisdictions—the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department in California—and explains how these jurisdictions developed partnerships with their Veterans Affairs resources and other entities in their criminal justice systems.
In this webinar, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Reentry Resource Center review the FY19 Improving Reentry for Adults with Co-occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Illness application process.
In this webinar, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and The Council of State Governments Justice Center review the FY2019 Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program application process.
This webinar provides an overview of the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system; describes factors contributing to the need for cultural competency as it relates to people in the criminal justice system who have mental illnesses; identifies strategies and best practices that judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys can employ when working with people of diverse backgrounds who have mental illnesses.
In this webinar, CSG Justice Center staff explain the training and technical assistance opportunities and resources available to FY18 JMHCP grantees.
In this webinar, CSG Justice Center staff explain the training and technical assistance opportunities and resources available to grantees, and staff from the Bureau of Justice Assistance provide an overview of the post-award grant management requirements.
Featuring Becki Ney of the National Resource Center on Justice-Involved Women, this webinar covers system-level strategies to maximize outcomes for women in the criminal justice system and ensure the sustainability of gender-responsive services.
This report presents opportunities to expand what Douglas County is already doing well and improve upon systems performance.
Developed with funding support from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, this policy brief describes key components to developing a systems-wide diversion strategy and focuses on the fundamental agencies within the criminal justice system that can lead the implementation of diversion interventions, with the goal of diverting people with mental illness from the justice system and into community-based treatment and support services.
This report identifies ten specific areas, or guiding principles, that will assist states and federal policymakers—including criminal justice professionals—in defining and understanding what comprises safe, effective, and legal recovery housing.
This report from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law describes the essential community mental health services that must be expanded to divert people with significant psychiatric disabilities from the criminal justice system.
This brief applies key elements of Olmstead v. L.C. law to the challenge of reducing the vastly disproportionate number of people with mental illnesses in the U.S. criminal justice system.
The Link in Minneapolis, MN, and both Larkin Street Youth Services and Collaborative Courts for Superior Courts in San Francisco, CA, shared how they are leveraging partnerships between the homelessness services and justice systems to disrupt and end the cycle of homelessness among youth and young adults.
In 2018 the county was recognized as one of 16 innovator counties among more than 450 counties that have joined the Stepping Up Initiative, a national effort to divert people with mental illness from jails into treatment.
New Castle County Police are among many moving to offer treatment in lieu of an arrest. The Council of State Governments Justice Center says that “police departments are increasingly seeking help from the behavioral health system.”
Almost 40 percent of people in San Diego jails were homeless when arrested last year, marking a significant increase from the previous two years, a study released Thursday showed.
Arnold Ventures has committed $720,000 to assist 16 counties across the country in providing opioid treatment in jail. Through a facilitated nine-month planning process, each jurisdiction will build comprehensive jail-to-community treatment programs.
As a youth advocate with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, Bree recounted their experience of incarceration in a report. “I felt violated, like I wasn’t even a human being anymore.”
Here’s how it works: The program takes care of housing and food—things the women would normally need from their trafficker. Participants get treatment for trauma and addiction, and they are eligible to get their records expunged.
Part of DOJ’s Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program, the grant will pay salaries to allow a Memorial mental-health professional to be based in the jail and conduct assessments of inmates within a day or two after they are brought in by police.
When the MacArthur Foundation called Lisa Daugaard to tell her she’d been selected for a prestigious fellowship, she didn’t answer. Daugaard thought the calls were coming from a telemarketer, and she had a lot on her mind.
Holyoke Medical Center says it is beginning to see less recidivism among opioid-dependent individuals coming through its emergency department, where it has added staff to help such individuals not relapse and to access help.