St. Clair County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration

The Bureau of Justice Assistance's (BJA) Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) is funded through the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-414), which was reauthorized in 2008 (Public Law 110-416). The primary purpose of JMHCP is 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 mental health and other treatment services for those individuals with mental illness or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Jurisdictions are eligible to apply for planning, planning and implementation, or expansion funding through JMHCP.

The County of St. Clair will use their Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) grant funds ($45,992) to establish the St. Clair County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration. This Collaboration will participate in a thorough planning process to establish a Mental Health Court Program. The target population for the Mental Health Court will be individuals charged with a non-violent crime and with no history of violent crime that have been diagnosed with mental illness. The target population will also be defined with the assistance of the mental health care service providers and professionals through this planning process. The goal of this project is to increase public safety in St. Clair County by establishing a sustainable Mental Health Court Program that will provide supervised alternative treatment for offenders with mental illness.

CA/NCF