Expansion of the Burbank Mental Health Evaluation Team 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 were eligible to apply for grants to create a collaborative county approach to reduce the prevalence of individuals with mental disorders in jail, plan and implement a criminal justice and mental health or co-occurring collaboration, or expand upon or improve a well-established collaboration plan.

The grant recipient will use the planning and implementation grant funds to complete an already-initiated collaboration plan for their criminal justice and mental health collaboration, and then begin implementation of the plan during the project period. Grant funds can be used to support law enforcement response programs; mental health courts, pretrial services, and diversion/alternative prosecution and sentencing programs; treatment accountability services; specialized training for justice and treatment professionals; corrections/community corrections, transitional, and reentry services to create or expand mental illnesses or co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders support services; and non-treatment recovery support services coordination and delivery including case management, housing placement, job training, education, primary and mental health care, and family supportive services. CA/NCF