The Cook County Justice and Mental Health Collaboration

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 eligible to apply for this program were limited to states, units of local government, federally recognized Indian tribes (as determined by the Secretary of the Interior), and tribal organizations.

Collaborative County Approaches to Reducing the Prevalence of Individuals with Mental Disorders in Jail grant standard project description language: The grant recipient will use the collaborative county approaches to reduce the prevalence of individuals with mental disorders in jail. Funds will also be used to engage county leadership in a collaborative planning process focused on the goal of reducing the numbers of individuals with mental disorders and co-occurring substance use disorders in local jails who can safely be supervised and/or treated in the community. Grant funds may be used to support a targeted analysis of the prevalence of people with mental disorders in the local jail, a review of existing community resources, and 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