Topic: Behavioral Health

Last Updated September 9, 2024

Background & Approach

Together with neighboring Sarpy County and Region 6 Behavioral Healthcare, Douglas County is part of a Criminal Justice-Mental Health Information Sharing Initiative to build data-driven strategies to reduce the number of people with mental illness in their local jails. Douglas County has been recognized as a Stepping Up Innovator County due to its robust implementation of validated jail screening for behavioral health, brain injury, and trauma, as well as data utilization and sharing. They have also built ongoing cross-system collaboration through a Familiar Faces Project, meeting the needs of individuals with serious mental illness and frequent jail contact. Through the IMPACT Network, Douglas County focuses on initial detention and court hearings, implementing the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) and a pretrial release program targeted to specific populations with frequent contact and mental health needs. They also plan to partner with Sarpy County to develop a crisis stabilization program, providing a more robust continuum of diversion options.

Last Updated September 16, 2024

Background & Approach

Doña Ana County’s Competency Diversion Pilot Project supports individuals with frequent contact with the criminal justice system who may have competence and/or mental illness needs. Individuals meet with a forensic navigator for a warm handoff to services (e.g., housing, transportation, medications for opioid use disorder, medical, behavioral health, assisted outpatient treatment) within 72 hours. The detention center’s medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program provides induction, maintenance dosing, withdrawal management, and referral to an MAT provider upon release to the community. The county’s Reach, Intervene, Support, and Engage (RISE) program reduces reincarceration and homelessness by creating jail reentry plans and linking to community-based services.

In 2023, Doña Ana County Health and Human Services equipped cross-agency staff to provide trauma-informed response training, with support from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).They conducted subsequent training with mental health and substance use disorder treatment providers, detention center cadets, crisis triage center personnel, and the fire department crisis response mobile unit team. Doña Ana County has also implemented several collaborative initiatives, including a taskforce to map racial and ethnic inequities and to gather data on justice-involved individuals, New Mexico’s first Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic at Families & Youth Innovations Plus, and the LC3 Behavioral Health Collaborative of over 180 representatives across 70 cross-sector agencies, which works toward building an ideal behavioral health service system.