Just as staff in the criminal justice system recognize the
need to learn new skills that will allow them to provide appropriate care for
people with mental illness with whom they have contact, those who work in the
mental health field must develop awareness of the special needs of people with
mental illness who have been arrested and/or incarcerated. If they are to help people with mental
illness who have criminal histories to live in the community at large, mental
health staff must understand the implications of those histories as well as the
imprint arrest and incarceration may leave on a person. They also must
understand the criminal justice system itself so that they can interact
productively with their counterparts in that system.
Criminal justice agencies and community mental health
programs have different traditions, missions, and often even different
values. Their staff have typically been
trained very differently. One way of
looking at these differences is to think of them as different cultures. In order to achieve successful collaboration
and integration of resources, staff from both arenas will need to understand
their cultural differences as well as appreciate their overlapping missions.
An analogous situation arose when substance abuse
treatment began to increase in jails and prisons. What was discovered at that time was that cross-training was
necessary for solid collaboration and integration of services. Cross-training here simply means that each
staff train the other, so that criminal justice personnel learn more about
mental health and mental health staff learn more about criminal justice in a
combined learning environment.
Training topics for mental health providers and
administrators include the following:
Training about law enforcement
-
the public safety responsibilities of law enforcement officers
- police
protocols for the use of force
- responsibilities
of first and backup responders
- officers' expectations of
community providers
- familiarity
with law enforcement officers and officials
- the
booking process
Training about the court
- general
court procedures
- information
sharing in the court setting
- responsibilities
of prosecutors, court administrators, defense attorneys, and judges
- conditional
release programs and their administration in the jurisdiction
Training about corrections agencies
- jail
classification procedures
- jail
personnel and the jail environment
- correctional
procedures, including intake and classification
- scope
of behavioral health services available in prison
- correctional
medical staff and facilities
- corrections
release planning staff and procedures
- community
corrections (e.g. probation, parole) procedures and protocols
- familiarity
with the rules of Medicaid, SSI, SSDI, TANF, and other benefit programs for
those who are incarcerated in jail or prison
Training about working with consumers who have been involved with, or are
at risk of being involved with, the criminal justice system
- advanced
directives
- the
effects of correctional incarceration on mental illness
- obstacles faced by individuals
who have been incarcerated
- ensuring
the safety of the provider and consumer
- cultural
competency
- housing
options in the community for people with mental illness
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Recommendations for Implementation
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a.
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Work
with university and other mental health professional training programs to
enhance their curricula on the criminal justice system.
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Training programs for mental health professionals around
the country are slowly changing their curricula to address working with a
criminal justice system population.
Training in this area has several purposes. By enabling mental health
staff to use and understand terminology common in the criminal justice system,
the training would allow them to work more effectively with staff in that
system. Training also could have a more clinical orientation, helping mental
health staff to better understand the complex needs of people with mental
illness who are in contact with the criminal justice system. Depending on the
approach of the program, topics to be addressed might include everything from
the basics of criminal law and the criminal justice system to applying relapse
prevention techniques to criminal thinking.
With law schools and criminology programs adding courses
on mental illness, mental health practitioners may also wish to enroll in them
for the purpose of better understanding the criminal justice system's orientation. This would be especially true in areas or
settings where criminal justice issues have not yet penetrated professional
mental health training programs. (See Policy Statement 29: Training for Court
Personnel, for more on law school and continuing legal education classes
regarding mental illness.)
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b.
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Develop
in-service curricula for mental health staff that address obstacles to working
with criminal justice clients.
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In-service training is likely to be of more use to mental
health staff already working in the field. In many mental health agencies,
training in a number of clinical and nonclinical areas is already frequently
scheduled. Adding training in criminal justice issues will generally not pose
great logistical difficulty.
This in-service training would have several purposes. It would provide current information to
mental health staff about provisions in the criminal justice system for
treatment of people with mental illness.
It would allow mental health and criminal justice personnel to build and
enhance relationships. And it would
provide a forum for problem areas to be identified, potentially leading to
plans for subsequent training.
In-service training also could provide opportunities for
mental health staff to learn from clients themselves and their families about
the challenges they face when reentering the community after time in jail or
prison - or even after an arrest with no time having been served. People with
mental illness who have criminal justice histories often find they face an
additional stigma. Training that involves mental health staff and clients with
histories of criminal justice involvement can provide opportunities to address this stigma and the discrimination faced by many such clients.
Example:
Transitions Training, New York State
Office of Mental Health
The New York State Office of Mental Health has
developed a training program for mental health agency administrators and
supervisors to help them better serve individuals with mental illness who have
been incarcerated in state prison. The
training program addresses coordination with parole staff as well as the stigma
attached to involvement in the criminal justice system. The training is delivered by mental health
consumers who have experienced the struggles of incarceration in state prison
and release back into the community. A
mental health advocacy group provides consumer-trainers with support.
Example:
Connecticut Jail Diversion Project
Mental health clinicians in Connecticut's Jail
Diversion Project receive periodic in-service training about the missions and
procedures of the different criminal justice agencies with which they
collaborate. Representatives from the
Department of Corrections, the State's Attorney's office and the Public
Defender's office (among others) participate in the training and discuss case
scenarios with the clinicians. The
clinicians learn how to maintain the integrity of their role as treatment
professionals while operating in the criminal justice system.
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