The number of persons with mental illness in U.S. jails
continues to grow (1,2,3,4,5,6). Currently the prevalence of
serious mental illness among inmates is about 7 percent, which
means that nearly 700,000 persons with active symptoms of severe
mental illness are admitted to jails annually (5,6,7). About 75
percent of this population have a co-occurring alcohol or drug
use disorder (8). Criminal justice and mental health
professionals and advocates have called for diversion efforts to
link offenders with mental illness to community-based services
to break their continued cycling through the criminal justice,
mental health, and substance abuse treatment systems and to
reduce the number of people with mental illness in jails (1,9).
Jail diversion generally refers to specific programs that screen
detainees in contact with the criminal justice system for the
presence of mental disorder; they employ mental health
professionals to evaluate the detainees and negotiate with
prosecutors, defense attorneys, community-b