Rockdale Sheriff's Office Mental Health Collaboration Program

The agency to be served is the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office (RCSO). The RCSO is located within the jurisdiction of Rockdale County, Georgia. According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics (2019), Rockdale County has a population of 90,312. The Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office (RCSO) is comprised of 265 deputies.  The Rockdale County Jail houses two direct supervision dorms containing both maximum security and low to medium security pods. NaphCare is the contracted medical and mental health company that provides services to the RCSO Detention Center (Jail).

The goal of the RCSO MHCP is to expand the Jail Mental Health and Infirmary renovation project by including a collaborative program that targets inmates with MI and CMISA, as well as veterans. The objectives are to increase community capacity of mental service and wraparound services by providing MI and CMISA care to incarcerated individuals; and to provide program support and capacity building by training both RCSO deputies and NaphCare health practitioners on how to manage and target inmates with MI and CMISA that are at risk of recidivism.

Demonstrated through this proposal, the program-specific priority areas that will be met are promotion of civil rights, support to crime victims, and building trust between law enforcement and the community. Additionally, the RCSO and NaphCare Collaboration Program will reduce the risk of harm to individuals with MI or CMISA and to public safety by creating a Mental Health Unit exclusively for housing and treating inmates with MI and CMISA. The housing area will include pods designated for treating medium and high risk incarcerated females.

Risk will be minimized by recognizing that inmates are a vulnerable population. As such, data reporting will not contain personal or identifiable information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, etc. Empirical data from the Jail Management System (JMS) and RAPIDS databases will be used to evaluate and provide evidence associated with recidivism. Additionally, validated assessment tools such as the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, DSM-5 Cross-Cutting Symptom Measure, and the Behavioral Health Functioning Scale) and other indicators will be used to measure and evaluate inmates and the progression of the project.

There will be a demonstration that funds will be used for the collaboration between public health (NaphCare) and public safety (RCSO). Additionally, the application will prove that transition and re-entry services such as, (RRIPP) and (RRSAT) are inclusive to the project.