Durham's Mental Health Outreach Program

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 city of Durham will use $250,000 in federal funds (to supplement a local match) under the JMHCP Category 2: Planning & Implementation grant program. The City will develop a Mental Health Outreach Program (MHOP) that will serve as a co-responder model between law enforcement and mental health. Specifically, the City will increase outreach and follow-up to significantly reduce the number of arrests, incarcerations and requests for service.

The purpose of the Mental Health Outreach Program (MHOP) is to provide intensive follow up to service calls involving persons with mental illness to divert these individuals into community-based treatment. The program consists of four main goals: (1) to reduce re-arrest for minor, non-violent offenses for persons with mental illness; (2) to decrease the number of repeat calls for service; (3) to increase the number of individuals engaged in mental health services; and (4) to increase the number of law enforcement personnel trained in de-escalation and identifying mental illness.

CA/NCF