Fact Sheet #4
Policy to Address Issues Regarding People with Serious Mental Illnesses in
the
Criminal Justice System
Impact
The increase in the number of individuals with serious mental
illnesses who come in contact with law enforcement officers or are booked into
jail or sentenced to incarceration means that more and more individuals suffer
significant harm. For example:
- They experience great trauma in connection with arrest, booking or detention.
- They are unnecessarily stigmatized by involvement with criminal justice.
- They are penalized in their eligibility for housing, employment and public
benefits as a result of—and long after—arrest or detention.
The various parts of the criminal justice system also face
major problems, including:
- repeated use of significant police time and judicial resources;
- significant stress among law enforcement personnel (for example, when individuals
with depression try to encourage the officer to shoot them);
- occupancy of jail beds needed for more serious offenders;
- management problems in jail, often requiring suicide watch or causing major
disruptions for jail staff;
- challenges to probation and parole officers who lack special training or
are too few in number to work with people with serious mental illnesses;
- a scarcity of financial resources as a result of these and other issues.
Taking a Different Approach
What is needed is a new approach to policy that will:
- assure that individuals with serious mental illnesses do not end up in the
criminal justice system when a mental health approach would be more appropriate
or because of prior failures to make mental health services accessible;
- effectively move people with serious mental illnesses out of the criminal
justice system more expeditiously; and
- ensure that those who have been arrested or incarcerated do not return.
Goals for Policy
Such policies will result in:
- better outcomes for the individual with mental illness;
- greater safety for all—the community, law enforcement officers, correctional
staff, the individual with a mental illness and his or her family;
a more efficient criminal justice system;
- greater cost-effectiveness across the criminal justice and mental health
system, as mental health issues are addressed earlier and in a more appropriate
forum;
a more pleasant community for all.
Approaches That Have Been Tried
Many communities have adopted programs that will divert people with serious
mental illness from the criminal justice system at various stages of the process:
- time of arrest (pre-booking diversion);
- as the individual's case is initially processed in the jail (pre-booking
diversion);
- following booking, but without a trial (post-booking diversion);
- at adjudication or the trial stage (court-based diversion); or
- following incarceration (re-entry programs).
Diversion is most likely to succeed, to violate individual rights less and
to be less costly to the criminal justice system if it occurs in the early stages
of criminal justice processing. However, depending on the seriousness of the
crime or the individual's prior history in the criminal justice system, this
may not be feasible.
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