Justice and Mental Health Collaboration 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 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 collaborative county approaches to reducing the prevalence of individuals with mental disorders in local jails grant funds to engage in a collaborative planning process with county leadership with the goal of reducing the numbers of individuals with mental disorders and co-occurring substance use disorders in local jails who can be safely supervised and/or treated in the community. Grant funds can be used to support: 1) a targeted analysis to measure the prevalence of people with mental disorders in the local jail; 2) a review of existing community resources; and 3) identification and initial implementation of policy and practice changes to minimize contact or deeper involvement of individuals with mental disorders and co-occurring substance use disorders in the criminal justice system. CA/NCF