The Border Children's Mental Health Interception 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.

The County of El Paso will use the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) grant funds ($250,000) to divert select youth from the juvenile justice system into the Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative (BCMHC), to receive appropriate mental health services. This program will focus on youth between the ages of 10 and 16 with severe emotional disturbances and who are first time non-violent offenders. The BCMHC will focus on: (1) enhancing pre-adjudication diversion programming; (2) formulating agreements and a strategic plan for inter-agency collaboration and sustainability; (3) ensuring assessments, services and treatment are provided to 30 youth in the Deferred Prosecution Program; (4) devising and implementing a data collection plan on the rate of recidivism; and (5) reducing recidivism over the implementation period for 70 percent of the youth enrolled through this project.

CA/NCF