News and Announcements

International Association of Chiefs of Police Report on Improving Police Response to Persons Living with Mental Illness

In May 2009, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) hosted a National Policy Summit on Building Safer Communities: Improving Police Response to Persons with Mental Illness. The goal of the summit was to begin a dialogue resulting in recommendations for local, state, federal and tribal organizations that will improve the safety of community members and law enforcement officers when responding to crisis calls involving a person living with mental illness. The report from this summit was recently released and can be found on the IACP website.

NAMI Massachusetts Receives Grant to Study Funding for Jail Diversion

NAMI Massachusetts and the Association for Behavioral Healthcare (ABH), with support from The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, have contracted with DMA Health Strategies to research and write a position paper. The topic will be programs that divert individuals living with serious mental illness who engage in problematic but non-violent behaviors from involvement in the criminal justice system by providing them with more appropriate mental health services. The position paper will evaluate various funding strategies that have been used in other states to determine what would be a good funding strategy for the Commonwealth to sustain proven program model(s) such as Crisis Intervention Teams, jail diversion, mental health courts and others. The project is expected to be completed within six months.

Join NAMI’s Forensic Leaders Listserv

In addition to CIT in Action, NAMI maintains a listserv of local leaders interested in CIT, jail diversion and other issues related to the criminalization of people with mental illness. We use the list to distribute announcements and information, for urgent calls to action on legislation and to send requests for information. If you are interested in joining our Forensic Leaders listserv, please e-mail Laura at laurau@nami.org.

New GAINS Center Resource--Getting Inside the Black Box: Understanding How Jail Diversion Works

The National GAINS Center recently released a new publication on jail diversion, the result of an expert advisory group’s analysis of 20 years of data. The paper shows that there is hard evidence that jail diversion works – both in reducing justice system involvement and improving treatment outcomes. The paper analyzes the factors that make for a successful jail diversion program and argues that for the subset of people living with mental illness who are involved with the criminal justice system, poverty is a key factor leading to arrest. The resource is available on the GAINS Center website.

 

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When you become a member of NAMI, you become part of America's largest grassroots organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons living with serious mental illness. And now you can join online.