John F. Crilly, MSW, MPH, PhD, Community and Preventive Medicine, University of Rochester, c/o Rochester Psychiatric Center, 1111 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, 585-241-1712, roisjfc@omh.state.ny.us

Mentally ill offenders use large amounts of expensive services in the community. New programs to address this population are developed which add to this expense. These programs generally use pre-post comparisons to report their outcome. However, this type of evaluation would likely carry greater weight if outcome was compared to a gold standard. The author introduces the potential of using community probation as a "gold standard" against which to compare special programs for the population of mentally ill offenders. Using the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), the author will present service utilization data on mentally ill persons on and off probation. This may be a useful first step in determing a gold standard against which to compare new programs for this population.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn the use of a large, public access file to explore service utilization of special populations nationwide. They will also learn the general service use trends of this difficult to treat population.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.