Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2010, $200,000)
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 Denver Police Department (DPD) will use funds to re-implement the Denver Assessment Response Team (DART) program that operated from June 2008 to December 2009 but was cut due to budget restrictions. The program will serve approximately 500 mentally disturbed individuals in the city of Denver each year.
DART was modeled on best practices in use in Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) programs nationwide and was designed to provide a rapid, comprehensive, and compassionate mental health care/law enforcement response to citizens in Denver by reducing police contacts, and in turn, unnecessary incarcerations and hospitalizations of individuals with serious mental illness.
CA/NCF