CJC Receives Federal Competitive Grant Award

For immediate release: October 5, 2009
Contact: Jenise Link, (561) 355-1503

The Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Commission’s joint grant application with the Oakwood Center of the Palm Beaches, Inc. has been awarded under the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance. This is the first year that any county in Florida has been awarded a grant in this program. A total of 17 percent of the nationwide applicants were awarded, and Palm Beach and Citrus counties were the only two Florida counties to receive the grant.

Earlier this year, the county’s Criminal Justice, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Planning Council, chaired by County Commissioner Jeff Koons and then Chief Judge Kathleen Kroll, decided to pursue this funding opportunity while working on finalizing a comprehensive strategic plan. In Palm Beach County, this grant will be used for enhanced Crisis Intervention Team training and for a pilot project for intensive forensic case management. The grant period is for 30 months beginning in October 2009.

Background:

The JMHCP was created by the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 in response to requests from state government officials to recommend improvements to the criminal justice system's response to people with mental illness. The purpose of the program is to increase public safety by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, mental health treatment and substance abuse systems to increase access to treatment for this unique group of offenders.  People with mental illness are significantly represented in the segment of the population in contact with the criminal justice system. Approximately 5 percent of the U.S. population has a serious mental illness, while according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in a 1999 report, about 16 percent of the prison or jail population has a serious mental illness. Of the 10 million people booked into U.S. jails in 1997, at least 700,000 had a serious mental illness; approximately three-quarters of those individuals had a co-occurring substance abuse disorder.