Serving people with mental illness who have been involved with, or who are at risk of becoming involved with, the criminal justice system presents special challenges for mental health providers. These individuals tend to have multiple service needs, may be difficult to engage, and are often without the resources to pay for treatment. In addition, criminal justice involvement can hamper continuity of care, exacerbate symptoms, and disrupt essential benefit programs.

The Consensus Project suggests strategies to ensure that people with mental illness receive services that help them avoid criminal justice involvement in the first place, and describes ways for mental health service providers to work with criminal justice personnel and other service providers to minimize the disruption of care and the barriers to reintegration into the community that arrest and incarceration can cause.

Though the Consensus Project encourages a systemic approach to improving the criminal justice system response to people with mental illness, we recognize the need for mental health providers to focus on the issues that most directly pertain to their roles. To that end, we recommend that mental health providers focus on the following sections: