Research Report
Behavioral Health Diversion March 3, 2026
This resource highlights data from two surveys of 53 U.S. jurisdictions planning and implementing crisis centers. It contains specific and practical data regarding centers’ service capacities, data collection and evaluation, staffing, funding, partnerships and collaborations, and critical challenges and lessons learned.
Research Report
Behavioral Health Crime Policing November 6, 2025
The police are often viewed as the gatekeepers of the criminal legal system (CLS), and research emphasizes how their decision-making affects various outcomes, particularly in relation to patrol officer discretion. However, public safety communications personnel (PSCP), who answer 911 calls and handle radio operations, are frequently overlooked, even though they are often the first point of contact for the public. PSCP make discretionary choices that significantly influence police decisions and can affect case outcomes (Gillooly, 2020, 2022). These choices may impact the enforcement of legal sanctions, the use of force, diversion programs, and ultimately, the jail population.
The dispatch process is complex and varies depending on the nature of the call, the specific agency, and the broader community. There are multiple points of contact the public uses to reach public safety personnel by telephone: emergency lines (i.e., 911) and various non -emergency and administrative lines. When a call comes into a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), it is typically answered by a PSCP, who will listen to the caller's information, ask probing questions, and, if the call requires a law enforcement response, enter details into computer systems, such as Computer Aided Dispatching (CAD) software.
Research Report
Behavioral Health Disability June 23, 2025
This paper will explore the intersectional identities of people with mental health disabilities involved with the criminal legal system, including the added challenges they face, and the community-based, person-centered solutions that better serve us all, including by embracing, rather than stigmatizing, diversity. Throughout, we provide examples of initiatives that communities across the country, including the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety + Justice Challenge network cities and counties, are undertaking to better serve a diverse population and reduce their exposure to law enforcement and incarceration. These community initiatives are not only more effective and humane than using criminal enforcement mechanisms to address mental health challenges, but also help communities comply with civil rights laws and federal protections for people with mental health disabilities by providing services in the most integrated setting and ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to benefit from public programs and services.
Research Report
Behavioral Health Disability Housing June 23, 2025
Every year, over seven million admissions occur in the 3,116 local jails across the United States. Local mass incarceration disproportionately impacts the most marginalized communities—especially Black, Latinx, and Indigenous individuals; LGBTQ+ people; those living in poverty; and survivors of violence. A significant number of these individuals also have at least one disability, yet this critical aspect of their identities is often overlooked in analyses of mass incarceration and by the criminal legal reform movement. While the prevalence of psychiatric disabilities (often referred to as mental illnesses) is well known, the prevalence of other disabilities—including those that are cognitive, physical, and sensory and Deaf individuals—remain largely absent from mainstream discussions and reform efforts.
This paper begins by discussing disability and Deaf communities and their overrepresentation in the criminal legal system. By tracing the history of involuntary institutionalization and incarceration of people with disabilities, we can better understand the deep disparities of today. We explore the complex, interrelated systems that increase the likelihood of individuals with disabilities encountering the criminal justice system, as well as the systemic features within that system that perpetuate these disparities. Finally, we present policy and practice recommendations aimed at reducing the high incarceration rates and harm experienced by people with disabilities within the criminal legal system. Because well over half of people in jails have a disability, we cannot address local mass incarceration without centering these communities in our collective efforts.
Research Report
Behavioral Health Disability June 23, 2025
Among disabled people in jails, certain groups require disability access that cannot be readily addressed by generalist understandings of “ADA compliance” or by disability as a medical condition. Consequently, failure to fully consider disability dynamics within jails and reentry can lead to negative health impacts, decreased jail safety, and recidivism. It is time to see disability not as a checklist of disability rights compliance tasks, but as a breakthrough lens that can advance the work of making all communities safer, and thus to support all people to achieve their true potential.
As a type of nonprofit service and advocacy organization known as a Center for Independent Living, led by and for people with all kinds of disabilities, Access Living has spent more than forty years changing society so that everyone, disabled or not, can thrive. In the last six years, with the support of the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge, we have sought to intentionally rethink disability strategies for decarceration through reducing the use of jails. We have done this through the lived experience of our staff, as well as through rooting our work in relationships with all kinds of people with disabilities, including those who are system-involved.
This report reviews problems faced by specific under-addressed disability groups whose experiences highlight systems failures. We then identify systemic gaps created by a misalignment of philosophic approaches toward people with disabilities. The report benefits from the insights of system-impacted Access Living community members with disabilities over the years, some of whose anecdotal observations are shared in this paper. We then highlight disability-centered strategies from both jail- and community-based disability programs that offer disability justice-oriented pathways to reducing jail use and over-incarceration of people with disabilities.
