Jackson County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Planning Project

The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP), seeks to increase public safety through innovative cross-system collaboration for individuals with mental illness who come into contact with the criminal or juvenile justice systems. This program is funded through the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (MIOTCRA) (Public Law 108-414). The program is designed to increase public safety by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health and substance abuse treatment systems to increase access to services for offenders with mental illness. Activities under this initiative encourage early intervention for 'system-involved' individuals with mental illness; provides new and existing mental health courts with various treatment options; maximizes diversion opportunities for nonviolent offenders with mental illness and co-occurring disorders; promotes training for justice and treatment professionals on criminal justice processes and mental health and substance abuse issues; and facilitates communication, collaboration, and the delivery of support services among justice professionals, treatment and related service providers, and governmental partners.

Jackson County will use grant funds to develop the Justice and Mental Heath Collaboration Program (JHMC). The goal of the JMHC Program is to increase the diversion of people with mental illness from the criminal justice system and to link them with community treatment. The program will use a sequential intercept model for its planning platform, a conceptual/organizing framework for communities to use when considering the interface between criminal justice and mental health systems. The model uses a series of early points of interception at which an intervention can be made to prevent individuals from entering or penetrating deeper into the criminal justice system. The interception points will be law enforcement and emergency service; post-arrest (e.g., initial detention and initial hearings); post-initial hearings (e.g., jail, courts, forensic evaluations, and forensic commitments); re-entries from jails, state prisons, and forensic hospitalizations; and community corrections and community support. The planning of the JMHC program will be performed by a core partnership of the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, Jackson County Community Justice (adult probation and parole), Jackson County Drug Court, Jackson County District Attorney, Jackson County Health and Human Services (e.g., public mental health programs), and Jackson County Defense Bar.

CA/NCF