The Mental Health Service Act calls for a focus on addressing seven “negative outcomes” that might result from untreated mental illness, including incarcerations, school failure or dropout, unemployment, prolonged suffering, homelessness, and removal of children from their homes.
To assess the potential impact of mental health services on indicators of criminal justice involvement, such as arrests, mental health service data from the Full Service Partnership (FSP) program were linked with arrest data from the Department of Justice for years 2007-2016. Analyses of these linked data show that there was a dramatic reduction in arrest rates for clients who had received intensive FSP mental health services across demographic subgroups, and across most counties.
Key Findings/Highlights
Criminal Justice Mental Health Demographics: The gender, age group, and race of the client partners involved in the study period by county.
Criminal Justice Mental Health Outcomes: The effect of intensive mental health programming on client partners’ criminal justice involvement, through a comparison of arrest rates before, during after FSP program participation, by gender, age group, race/ethnicity, and by county.
