The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), a division of the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice, announced today the selection of five mental health court learning sites as part of its Mental Health Courts Program (MHCP):

• Akron (OH) Municipal Mental Health Court
• Bonneville County (ID) Mental Health Court
• Bronx County (NY) Mental Health Court
• Dougherty Superior Court (GA) Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division
• Reno (NV) Multi-Jurisdictional Mental Health Court

CSG and the MHC Learning Sites expert consultants would like to thank all of the learning site applicants, particularly the finalist sites that spent significant time and effort planning and facilitating site visits.

Learning sites will act as a resource for jurisdictions across the country that are interested in developing and refining mental health courts. Learning sites will also become leaders in the field by working with BJA and its technical assistance provider, the Council of State Governments (CSG), to continually assess and improve their own program operations.

To learn about the MHC Learnings Sites project history, click here. Learning sites were chosen from approximately 120 mental health courts across the nation through a selection process that began in March 2005. BJA and CSG developed a rigorous process for choosing learning sites. The process included surveys, advice from expert consultants, and two days of intensive site visits during which a criminal justice expert, a mental health expert, and a CSG staff person observed the courts' operations and interviewed key team members.

As BJA's technical assistance provider for the MHCP, CSG coordinates national conferences, develops policy briefs, maintains a Web site, and provides on-site trainings.

The five learning sites will host interested jurisdictions over a two-year period, answer phone and email questions from the field, work with CSG to develop standardized promotional materials for their courts. BJA, in turn, will sponsor a two-day training forum for the learning sites, absorb some of the costs associated with hosting visits, and help facilitate peer-to-peer technical assistance requests.

Over the coming months, CSG will work with the learning sites to develop site visit procedures and materials that describe each court's operations, which will be available on the BJA and CSG Web sites in late summer 2006. At that time, CSG will make instructions for visiting learning sites available to interested jurisdictions.