Criminal justice and health and social service contacts and associated costs of individuals with a serious mental illness who became involved in the criminal justice system

SESSION ABSTRACT

The estimated number of adults with a serious mental illness who are sentenced to jail every year is approaching 1 million. Few jails are funded or equipped to provide comprehensive mental health care. As a consequence, many inmates receive inadequate treatment and cause considerable management and financial problems while incarcerated. Re-arrest rates are high, and cycling in and out of the local and state correctional systems is a common experience. Although most would agree that the current situation is unacceptable, our current understanding of the individuals involved, and of their diverse histories, problems and needs is clearly not adequate for designing and appropriately targeting policy and programmatic interventions.

This session will respond to this deficit by describing the criminal justice and health and social service histories, as well as the associated costs to state and local systems of 3,769 individuals with a serious mental illness (SMI) who became involved in the criminal justice system of a large urban county in Florida. By analyzing utilization and expenditure data collected over a 4-year period from July 2002 to June 2007, we have identified subgroups within this population whose histories and needs may suggest different policy and programmatic responses. This session presents selected findings from the Florida arm of a two-state study. Currently we are beginning work on the Texas arm of the study and expect to have results by the fall of this year.