The Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project is a broad-based, national effort to improve the response to people with mental illness who come into contact (or are at risk of coming into contact) with the criminal justice system. This report provides policymakers, practitioners, advocates, and others determined to address this issue with an array of options and ideas, many of which have emerged in communities across the country.

This report has a broad target audience best characterized as "agents of change." Defined as a wide range of leaders in communities and states, change agents may be state elected officials such as legislators or appointed administrators and their staffs who can consider and address the broad policy issues that have profound implications at the community level. Because this is a community problem, however, the change agents must also include a wide range of community players, starting with those most closely affected by the problem. They can use the recommendations found in this report to strengthen community structures, and they can work with policymakers to ensure that solutions they craft are practical and effective.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this report is that it reflects a consensus among the stakeholders in the criminal justice and mental health system: police professionals, district attorneys, public defenders, judges, state corrections directors and jail administrators, community corrections officials, state mental health directors, local mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, clinicians, crime victims, consumers, mental health advocates, and others.  Legislators, policymakers, practitioners, and other agents of change can champion and implement the detailed recommendations in this report knowing that each has been developed and approved by experts from an extraordinarily diverse range of perspectives who work in and administer the departments, agencies, and organizations trying every day to address the needs of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.

What, exactly, is the problem? How did it develop? Who can fix it? What can they do? And where do they start? This report addresses these questions. State and local government officials and community leaders can use the policy statements provided in this report to get beyond discussing the issue and to begin developing initiatives that will address the problem. Furthermore, the report enables agents of change to cite programs and practices that demonstrate that there are in fact jurisdictions that have already taken steps to implement a particular policy statement. And, it provides practical examples and guidelines for tailoring recommendations to the unique needs of a particular community.