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The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) supports communities across the country in their work to address overrepresentation of people with behavioral health needs in the criminal justice system. For five years, between 2015 and 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance… Read More

Individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) have long advocated for addressing disparities in the behavioral health and criminal justice systems. Such pervasive inequities can be complex to understand and overwhelming to counties that are just starting to confront them. The Stepping Up framework offers a… Read More

In Focus: Conducting a Comprehensive Process Analysis is a new brief from the Stepping Up partners that presents counties with steps for examining how people who have serious mental illnesses (SMI) move through a county’s criminal justice and behavioral health systems. A process analysis can help counties determine appropriate pathways for people with SMI, identify what resources exist across systems for this population, and determine how much relevant data is available and where more data is needed to track Stepping Up’s four key measures. Read More

Released by Stepping Up: A National Initiative to Reduce the Number of People with Mental Illnesses in Jail, this report is intended to assist counties with developing and implementing a systems-level, data-driven plan that can lead to measurable reductions in the number of people with mental illnesses in local jails. The report serves as a blueprint for counties to assess their existing efforts to reduce the number of people with mental illnesses in jail by considering specific questions and progress-tracking measures. Read More

This handbook is designed to complement the Reducing the Number of People with Mental Illnesses in Jail: Six Questions County Leaders Need to Ask (Six Questions) framework as a step-by-step facilitation guide for project coordinators. Read More

An opportunity exists at every step along the criminal justice continuum to improve responses to a person’s mental health needs. Completing a comprehensive process analysis helps county leaders determine where improvements can be made to better identify needs and share information. Some counties choose to conduct an initial analysis through a system mapping exercise. It is important that an inventory of community-based services and supports also be conducted as part of this process, and data to support this analysis should be included at all possible points. For example, knowing the current number of people who have mental illness who are booked into jail helps county leaders determine the scale of the problem they are working to address and can be used to the compare arrest rates of people who have mental illness to people who do not. Read More

Join the Stepping Up partners for the fourth Stepping Up Network Technical Assistance Call. On this call, counties will engage in a facilitated discussion on the fourth question of the “Six Questions” document: Have We Conducted a Comprehensive Process Analysis and Inventory of Services? Counties are encouraged to sign on and join the conversation with national experts and county practitioners! Please be sure to review the “Conducting a Comprehensive Process Analysis and Inventory of Services” webinar prior to listening to this call. Read More

This webinar provided counties with strategies for how they can conduct comprehensive process analyses of their justice, behavioral health, housing, and social service systems to identify whether service needs are being met and to identify gaps in services Read More

This webinar provides an overview of the Sequential Intercept Model to identify criminal justice system intercept points (e.g., arrest, pretrial, reentry, etc.) where change can be made to reduce the number of people with mental illnesses in jails. Read More