Issue Brief

Interagency Collaboration Jail Populations Mental Health May 14, 2015

When Political Will is Not Enough: Jails, Communities, and Persons With Mental Health Disorders (Policy Research Associates)

Policy Research Associates

Many solutions to address the overuse of jail to house people with serious mental illness exist, but a challenge facing local jurisdictions is how to put knowledge into practice. This white paper addresses how to capitalize on emergent evidence-based practices for community-based alternative services that can address the overuse of jails for people with serious mental illness. It focuses on how to use the Sequential Intercept Model—a schematic of the criminal justice system that is broken into five segments, or intercepts, where people with mental illness can be identified, diverted, treated and returned to the community—as a planning tool.