Women in rural jails are more likely to screen positive for a serious mental illness compared to men in rural jails and all individuals incarcerated in urban jails, according a study published this month in Criminal Justice and Behavior by researchers from Wayne State University.
An estimated 15% of the 1.8 million incarcerated individuals in the US have opioid use disorder (OUD).1,2 These individuals have a substantially higher risk of overdose after leaving correctional facilities.1 Pharmacotherapy for OUD is associated with reductions in postincarceration mortality, yet as of 2018, less than 14% of correctional systems offered buprenorphine or methadone.3 Over the past 5 years, more municipalities and states have enacted policies to provide access to OUD treatment, but the extent to which this implementation has actually increased buprenorphine use remains unclear.
People with mental illness (MI) are overrepresented in prisons, in part, because people with MI stay in prison longer. Correctional officers (COs) use discretion in force, violations, and segregation. Crisis intervention teams (CITs) are being used in corrections to reduce disparities in sanctioning and improve safety. This quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study includes 235 CIT COs who were surveyed before and after training on knowledge of MI, stigmatizing attitudes, and perception of response options. Non-CIT (n = 599) officers completed the same survey. Randomly selected CIT COs completed interviews 6 to 9 months following training (n = 17). CIT COs had significantly lower stigmatizing attitudes, more mental health knowledge, and better perceptions of options following CIT training compared with non-CIT COs. This preliminary
work on CIT use in prison is promising; additional work is needed to determine whether these changes result in behavior change among COs and improvements in outcomes for people with MI.
The safety and well-being of all Native Americans is a top priority for my Administration. My Administration will work hand in hand with Tribal Nations and Tribal partners to build safe and healthy Tribal communities and to support comprehensive law enforcement, prevention, intervention, and support services.
The original version of this document was developed in early 2019 as part of the Policing Project’s role in the Working Group on Officer-Involved Fatalities at the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and was included in the Toolkit for Prosecutors and Communities to Address and Prevent Police-Involved Fatalities. The toolkit was the result of a year-long collaboration between family members, prosecutors, police chiefs, and law enforcement and policy experts, including the Policing Project.
The current Guidelines were updated in August 2021.
The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model was developed as a specialized police-based program in which officers are trained to safely interact with individuals with mental illnesses. In 2011, the Minnesota Department of Corrections adapted this program for corrections. This study compares prison incidents involving CIT officers to a comparison sample of non-CIT incidents on a number of outcomes, including gaining compliance from people in custody (either immediately or as an incident unfolds), making mental health referrals, and using force against people in custody. We conducted a content analysis of reports describing 500 incidents in an all-male, maximum security prison and estimated multivariate binary logistic models
to control for characteristics of situations, incarcerated people, and employees. The findings provide some support for implementing CIT training in a correctional setting, but some less encouraging results show that improvements to the program are
still needed