| Established in September 2002 and funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, this Center directed by Professor Nancy Wolff focuses exclusively on mental health services issues that arise when persons with mental illness have encounters with the criminal justice system. The Center is dedicated to improving how the mental health and criminal justice (CJ) systems respond to the needs of persons with mental illness and to informing the policies intended to affect these responses.A multidisciplinary team of researchers conducts state-of-the-art research in two major areas: Precursors to the criminal encounter that focuses on the individual with mental illness and how that person comes to the attention of the CJ system and Processing dynamics that examines how the CJ system responds to the individual's mental illness as the person moves through the CJ continuum.The Center is committed to building active partnerships with organizations, practitioners, consumers and advocates and including them in the research and training activities of the Center.The Center also supports a postdoctoral training program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. |
