Mental Health and Criminal Justice Integrated Response Collaborative Project

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.

Clermont County will receive $223,280 in JMHCP Category 2 (Planning & Implementation) funding for a 24 month period. The grant will be administered by the Clermont County Mental Health and Recovery Board, in coordination with Child Focus, Inc. to operate the mobile crisis team, a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) trained instructor to facilitate the trainings to the County police officers, and the Union Township Police Department to sponsor the training of County police officers. The funding will provide for planning and further development of the model, CIT-based training for all County police departments free of charge, hiring staff to operate the mobile crisis team, development of a data base to provide access to valuable behavioral health information, development of an outcome data base to collect information, development of a collaborative data network to exchange information between the jail and the mobile crisis team, additional crisis intervention services for individuals who need brief treatment and not hospitalization, and training expenses related to the administration of the grant.

Through this collaboration, the following goals will be addressed: improved collaboration between mental health and law enforcement, increased percentage of County police officers trained in CIT, increased access to appropriate behavioral health treatment, and decreased incarcerations of nonviolent individuals with mental illness. The primary outcomes of this program are to maximize diversion opportunities for nonviolent adults with a mental health disability or a co-occurring disorder by offering training for police and other first responders and criminal justice professionals in order to provide them with responses tailored to the specific needs of individuals with a mental illness, and improve access to treatment service options through the availability of a mobile crisis team.

CA/NCF