Part II: The Framework
focus on higher-risk and higher-need populations to achieve the greatest impact on recidivism. Although research shows that to increase public safety, community supervision and treatment resources should be concentrated on individuals who pose the greatest likelihood of reoffending, current policies, programs, and practices in many states and localities do not properly identify and prioritize these high-risk individuals. Many jurisdictions also lack multidisciplinary approaches between substance abuse, mental health, and corrections authorities that would create efficiencies and accountability that may offer better outcomes for all.
“
We routinely ask criminal justice professionals to do more with screening, identification, and treatment of behavioral health conditions while individuals are incarcerated. Now we are looking to behavioral health administrators and providers to find new and better ways to help these individuals avoid involvement with the corrections system.” —Laura Nelson, CSG Justice Center Board Member and Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director, Arizona Department of Health Services’ Division of Behavioral Health
The framework does not suggest that individuals with low criminogenic risk should be ignored. Individuals with high mental health and/or substance abuse needs must have these needs addressed while in jail and prison as part of correctional health services. On probation or at reentry, these low-risk/high-need individuals should be linked to effective treatments for which they are eligible and that can be paid for by existing behavioral health financing mechanisms, such as Medicaid and other local, state, and federal funding sources. For individuals with low criminogenic risk and low behavioral health needs, interventions should be timelimited and targeted to specific goals.110
The proposed framework takes the three systems as they are but provides the opportunity for each to contribute resources that can prompt new ways of doing business and different types of collaborative supervision and care. It is meant to provide a way for administrators and practitioners from the corrections and behavioral health fields to better understand their overlapping populations and to make important decisions about who can be served with existing resources—or how to expand their capacity to better meet public health and safety goals. The framework recognizes the distinct nature of the corrections, substance abuse, and mental health service systems: no single supervision and treatment model works in all settings. How these systems When you focus community finance their work, conduct planning, regulate supervision resources on lowrisk individuals, you can destroy providers and staff, license and contract, and evaluate the protective factors that made supervision and treatment services varies widely them low risk in the first place among jurisdictions. Even with this variation in by exposing them to high-risk approaches and resources, the framework proposes individuals and by disrupting a paradigm for system administrators and providers work and social supports through to discuss in common terms the complex individual onerous supervision conditions.” risks and needs within their systems. Once trained —Carl Wicklund, Executive professionals have screened and assessed individuals Director, American Probation and Parole Association in their respective systems using validated
“
35