Operations Core

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OPERATIONS CORE (Director: Dr. Nancy Wolff) Core Roadmap: The Operations Core provides a broad overview of the Center for Behavioral Health Services & Criminal Justice Research (referred to as the "Center") with these sections: introduction (Section A); significance of research and philosophy (Section B); progress and transition plan to an advanced center (Section C); administration structure (Section D); and brief summaries of the Cores (Section E). A. INTRODUCTION Roughly one in two inmates in prisons and jails is estimated to have a mental health (MH) problem.1'' Over the past decade, advocates and professional associations have lobbied for the expansion of MH services to prevent incarceration, provide appropriate treatment for those who are incarcerated, and develop reentry strategies for those leaving jails and prisons.3"6 In response, federal and state legislation, as well as court rulings, have changed legal structures in ways that advance the development of alternative criminal processing options,7 such as jail diversion8'9 and MH courts,10"12 as well as treatment capabilities within jails and prisons.1313a But, tough on crime legislation has advanced over the past 20 years making it more difficult to get out and stay out of the criminal justice (CJ) system, especially for people convicted of drug-related crimes. It is estimated that over 50% of people with mental illness (PMI) in jail or prison were under the influence of illegal drugs or alcohol at the time of their offense.1 These individuals are also more likely to reside in areas of concentrated social disadvantage1415 and when released from prison or jail are likely to return to the poorest, most problematic communities. Poverty and substance use (SU) problems (SUP) and disorders (SUD)" complicate efforts to treat mental illness in the community and in the CJ system. The social context of mental illness and its overlap with SU are part of the reason for criminal behavior. To date, the efforts to remove PMI from jails and prisons have focused on treatment, primarily MH treatment, even while untreated SUP/D is likely to make both conditions worse. While the research community has struggled to inform removal policies with rigorous and relevant MH services research, most of the major policy developments in MH and CJ have occurred with minimal empirical grounding.153 Moreover, the services and intervention research that has been done often proceeds without learning from criminology and rarely involves active collaborations with criminologists, addictions researchers, urban sociologists, and community developers/planners. This application requests continued funding for the Center, instituted in 2001 with funding from a DCISIR grant (P20 MH66170) from the NIMH. Since then the Center's infrastructure has been developed under the direction of Drs. Nancy Wolff, Jeffrey Draine, and William Fisher in ways that support the development of a criminologically-informed MH services research and training agenda. The Center focuses exclusively on MH and SU issues that arise when PMI have encounters with the CJ system and does so within an ecological and socially complex systems framework. Our advanced center proposal is informed by and speaks to methods and research issues that have been identified as problems over the past five years. They include: lack of integrative conceptualization; misapplication of outcome evaluation methods; overemphasis on individualspecific factors in explanatory models and in designing and studying interventions; and little attention to issues related to gender, SU, and poverty. These issues are addressed in the methods and principal research cores. The Center's primary goal is to advance research that will improve the welfare of PMI in ways that minimize the disruption in the delivery of treatment and maximize their potential to lead productive and rewarding lives. Towards this end, the underpinning philosophy of our Center is one that builds the capability and capacity to conduct research that achieves this goal. It includes building the capabilities of researchers and their collaborations with stakeholders. The Center, as a community of practice, endeavors to build the human and social capital of researchers and stakeholders and to provide opportunities, through its resources, to build research capacity that advances policy and practice and, in so doing, improves the welfare of PMI and society.