On October 28, 2008, more than 900 people registered for the Justice Center's first joint webinar with the National Council on Community Behavioral Healthcare to learn more about improving law enforcement responses to people with mental illnesses and the Essential Elements free resource.

Click here to listen to the audio presentation for free. Download the PowerPoint presentation used for this webinar.

Download Improving Responses to People with Mental Illnesses: Strategies for Effective Law Enforcement Training

Download Improving Responses to People with Mental Illnesses: The Essential Elements of a Specialized Law Enforcement-Based Program

The Issue
Law enforcement officers across the country are all too familiar with calls for service that repeatedly bring them into contact with people whose mental illness is not being adequately addressed. These officers often find themselves in the difficult position of determining whether to resolve such incidents informally or to take the person into custody, either for arrest or emergency evaluation. Although these incidents are generally resolved safely, on rare - but highly publicized - occasions they can involve use of force and the law enforcement officer, the person with mental illness, or both are seriously injured or killed. Without adequate training and access to community-based mental health resources, officers face tremendous obstacles in managing these incidents.

The Response
The Council of State Governments Justice Center, with guidance from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), has launched a program that builds on the successes of individual communities across the country to address law enforcement encounters with people with mental illness. This Bureau of Justice Assistance-funded program will provide resources for law enforcement leaders and their community partners to develop and enhance initiatives that make it easier for law enforcement to connect people with mental illness to much-needed services and to minimize the likelihood that law enforcement encounters will result in injury or death.

With support from key partners, Justice Center staff are surveying programs that span the criminal justice continuum and cataloging program information in the online Criminal Justice/Mental Health Information Network (InfoNet) database as a resource for policymakers, practitioners, and advocates working to improve outcomes when people with mental illnesses come into contact with the criminal justice system.

Share your expertise by participating in a national initiative to survey all existing specialized law enforcement responses to people with mental illness. Completing the survey will enable your law enforcement program to be profiled on the InfoNet.

Complete the Specialized Police Responses to People with Mental Illness Survey

Resources
For more information on Consensus Project work on improving outcomes of law enforcement encounters with people with mental illnesses, read the project overview, follow the links below or contact Laura Draper.