Jasper County Co-occurring Disorders Court Enhancement Initiative

The Missouri Twenty-ninth Judicial Circuit Court (Jasper County, population 120,217), in partnership with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, local treatment provider Ozark Behavioral Health Center, local legal advocates, and scientific consultants, requests $499,353 from the US BJA FY 21 Adult Drug Court and Veterans Treatment Court Discretionary Grant Program (Category 3: Adult Drug Courts. Competition ID: BJA-2021-00019) to enhance our co-occurring disorders court (CODC) program through the proposed Jasper County Co-occurring Disorders Court Enhancement Initiative. The Jasper County CODC is a rolling admission, post-adjudication, five-phase, 18-month treatment program for offenders experiencing co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse (CMISA). Current CODC operations are modeled after drug court principles and best practice standards, but several programming gaps remain that are addressed in the proposed evidence based enhancement activities aligned with best practices: I. Target Population; II. Equity and Inclusion; III. Roles and Responsibilities of the Judge; IV. Incentives, Sanctions, and Therapeutic Adjustments; VI. Complementary Treatment and Social Services; VIII. Multidisciplinary Team; IX. Census and Caseloads; and X. Monitoring and Evaluation. Proposed primary activities include expansion of the program in response to increased demand for services targeting additional non-violent needful clients in the jurisdiction (180 total over the grant); early identification and enrollment of targeted participants; enhanced evidence based treatment services for CMISA through expanded case management, increased MAT provision, additional drug-testing, addition of CRAFT family centered program, legal advocacy, annual CODC staff training, and data collection and program evaluation to provide feedback for improvement and inform sustainability options. An embedded jail clinician will align individualized treatment plans including case management, CRAFT, MAT, community service, restitution, and an aftercare/post-graduation success plan. Project goals include: 1) enhancing early identification of participants to minimize time to treatment through administration of RANT screening to abbreviate the timeframe between jail detention and court appearance to expedite treatment trajectories; 2) expanding CODC enrollment per increased need for services; 3) providing increased training and non-adversarial legal representation, 4) the delivery of evidence based individualized treatment for CMISA disorders including family programing; and 5) effect relapse and recidivism reduction among CODC graduates. The research team will provide a final technical report to include an executive summary and program suggestions, as well as disseminate results to practitioner and scientific stakeholders through journal publications and conference presentations. The jurisdiction has an adult drug court that has previously received BJA funding but the CODC has not.