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Behavioral Health and Justice Division
In 2020, The Behavioral Health and Justice Division (BHJD) was launched as a division of the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services after years as the Behavioral Health and Justice Related Services unit.
BHJD is committed to working towards reducing justice involvement for Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges including serious mental illness.
BHJD organizes its work according to the Sequential Intercept Model, identifying opportunities to intervene at various points of criminal justice involvement to divert individuals from further penetration of the system and connect them to supports and services. BHJD also aligns with Stepping Up and focuses its efforts on lowering the number of individuals with SMI and co-occurring substance use disorders in county jail, admissions to county jail, the length of stay in county jail, and recidivism, and increasing connections to treatment and support.
Vision
The DBHIDS Behavioral Health and Justice Division envisions that every Philadelphian with behavioral health challenges and criminal justice involvement will achieve health, well-being, and self-determination.
Mission
BHJD’s mission is to prevent and reduce justice involvement for Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges and to mitigate the impact of compounding disparities for Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges.
BHJD seeks to empower Philadelphia — both its citizens and its systems — by providing boundary-spanning navigation services, advanced clinical assessment services for continuity of care, behavioral health literacy training, and cross-system consultation.
Goal
Help justice-involved Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges to achieve community stability, thereby reducing perpetual criminal justice system involvement.
Behavioral Health and Justice Division: Overview
DBHIDS Postdoctoral Residency in Forensic Psychology
Interested in advanced training in forensic behavioral health assessment and policy? Consider the Behavioral Health and Justice Division (BHJD) Postdoctoral Residency in Forensic Psychology.
For more information, check out BHJD’s listing in the APPIC Postdoctoral directory or contact Chris.von.zuben@phila.gov of BHJD for more information.
BHJD Overarching Approach
BHJD is committed to working towards reducing criminal justice involvement for Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges, including Serious Mental Illness (SMI). BHJD organizes its work according to the Sequential Intercept Model, identifying opportunities to intervene at various points of the criminal justice system involvement to deflect and divert individuals away from further penetration of the system and into the behavioral health system. By helping connect individuals to needed treatment and support services that promote stability in the community, BHJD believes Philadelphians are less likely to be arrested and can achieve health, well-being, and self determination.
BHJD also aligns with Stepping Up and focuses its efforts on lowering the number of
Philadelphians with SMI admitted to the Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP), reducing their length of stay, connecting them to treatment/supports upon release, and reducing recidivism. BHJD believes helping individuals achieve community stability helps reduce recidivism, making Philadelphia safer. However, BHJD also believes helping individuals achieve community stability allows them to invest in their personal advancement and in the advancement of their communities. This increases self-efficacy and independence, increases social cohesion and belongingness, increases collective efficacy, increases community identity, and increases community pride.
In short, BHJD believes that helping justice-involved Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges achieve community stability leads to a cleaner, greener, safer Philadelphia with economic opportunity for all.
Major Activities
BHJD is a boundary-spanning division, meaning its work spans the intersection of criminal justice and behavioral health systems. BHJD’s activities help ensure that Philadelphians with behavioral health challenges who are at risk for justice involvement or who become involved in the criminal justice system can access helpful treatment and support resources. To that end, BHJD employs numerous staff including navigators, clinical assessors, and Certified Peer Specialists who assess the needs of justice-involved Philadelphians, create comprehensive reentry plans to help them effectively
reintegrate into society, and support them as they reenter community settings.
Additionally, BHJD collaborates with and provides training, expertise, and support to numerous Philadelphia criminal justice partners including the Defender Association, the District Attorney’s Office, the First Judicial District Court, the Managing Director’s Office of Criminal Justice, the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, and the Philadelphia Police Department.
Major Organizing/Policy Frameworks
- Stepping Up: Stepping Up is a data-driven framework to assist counties in reducing overrepresentation of individuals with behavioral health challenges in the criminal justice system. Stepping Up encompasses four key metrics: (1) reducing the number of individuals with behavioral health challenges booked into county jails, (2) shortening length of stay for individuals with SMI in county jail, (3) increasing connections to treatment for individuals with SMIs and criminal justice involvement, and (4) reducing recidivism for individuals with SMIs. The City of Philadelphia joined the Stepping Up Initiatives via a City Council Resolution in 2018. BHJD tracks/monitors Philadelphia’s progress in these four metrics via quarterly Stepping Up reports. Philadelphia’s efforts have resulted in it being named a Stepping Up Innovator County.
- Sequential Intercept Model: BHJD organizes its boundary spanning activities in accordance with the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM). SIM provides a systems-based framework for reducing overrepresentation of individuals with SMIs in the criminal justice system. It offers six “Intercepts” along the criminal justice spectrum where individuals can be connected to treatment and stabilization services to prevent further penetration into the justice system.
- Risk-Need-Responsivity: BHJD strongly opposes the notion that mental illness is itself a risk factor for criminality and violence. However, mental illness — particularly in the presence of Social Determinants of Health deficits — puts individuals at risk of life instability, which in turn puts them at risk for justice involvement. In this sense, mental illness puts individuals at risk for risk. To this end, BHJD employs the Risk-Need-Responsivity framework in its approach to addressing the overlap between behavioral health challenges and criminal justice involvement. The Risk Principle focuses on the intensity of intervention that an individual requires to reduce the likelihood of
perpetual justice involvement. The Need Principle focuses on addressing an individual’s specific changeable risk factors for recidivism. The Responsivity Principle focuses on the best way to approach risk-reducing intervention. This entails using evidence-based interventions for specific dynamic risk factors (General Responsivity). It also entails tailoring intervention approaches to consider individual differences (Specific Responsivity) (e.g., navigating language barriers, considering learning styles, considering the role of culture, addressing stabilization needs, etc.). BHJD’s overarching theory of change is that if a justice-involved individual with behavioral health challenges can be connected to treatment and support services, there is greater chance for community stability and reduced risk of perpetual justice involvement. - Trauma, Equity, Community (TEC): As a division of DBHIDS, BHJD is committed to addressing Trauma, achieving Equity, and engaging Community. BHJD’s services aspire to be traumainformed, trauma-responsive, and trauma-mitigating. BHJD seeks to reduce the compounding influence of behavioral health challenges and social disadvantages in justice-related outcomes. Further, BHJD seeks to foster an accessible community behavioral health and social supports system that prevents both first contact with the criminal justice system and perpetual contact with
the criminal justice system (i.e., recidivism). - Prioritizing to Address our Changing Environment (PACE): As a division of DBHIDS, BHJD is committed to promoting recovery, resilience, and self-determination for every Philadelphian. BHJD services promote the five priority areas in P.A.C.E’s strategic framework: (1) prevention and early intervention to prevent contact with the criminal justice system; (2) access to treatment and
services to prevent first and perpetual contact with the criminal justice system; (3) health economics – preventing contact with the criminal justice system offers greater opportunity for individual economic enrichment and decreased costs to society; (4) infrastructure and intelligence – real-time business analytics and information flow inform service delivery and improve outcomes for justice-involved individuals with behavioral health challenges, and (5) innovation by ongoing assessment of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth public forensic mental health system needs, BHJD identifies gaps and develops creative solutions that improve access and outcomes for individuals with behavioral health challenges and justice involvement.
BHJD's Services
As a division of DBHIDS, BHJD offers four key boundary-spanning services:
- Boundary-Spanning Navigation. “Navigation” refers to BHJD ensuring that individuals with behavioral health challenges and criminal justice involvement do not “slip through the cracks” of either system. The key focus of navigation is linked to stabilizing services that help prevent initial and perpetual criminal justice involvement. To facilitate linkage, BHJD assesses the needs of individuals with behavioral health challenges who are returning to the community from institutional settings. After completing this assessment, BHJD works to create warm handoffs to stabilize treatment and social support services.
- Advanced Clinical-Forensic Assessment for Continuity of Care. The needs of individuals with behavioral health challenges and justice involvement can be very complex. Individuals must be connected to levels of care that are appropriate for the acuity of their clinical presentation and their legal status and the risk they pose to the community. To this end, BHJD employs doctoral and masters-level clinicians who follow caseloads of individuals with behavioral health challenges and justice involvement. These clinicians’ complete comprehensive risk-and-needs assessments and submit them to the DBHIDS division of Community Behavioral Health to inform placement decisions (e.g., Extended Acute Care, Long-Term Structured Residence, Residential Treatment Facility for Adults, Community Rehabilitation Residential). They also regularly update behavioral health and court personnel on individual’s needs and provide consultation on how to best prepare individuals for discharge.
- Training. Linkage to services and supports starts with the recognition that a justice-involved individual may be suffering from behavioral health challenges (e.g., substance use, neurodevelopmental difficulties, neurocognitive difficulties, serious mental illness, trauma-related symptoms). Additionally, adequate intervention for individuals with behavioral health challenges and justice involvement must consider the unique needs of this population. To this end, BHJD provides behavioral health literacy and continuity of care training to behavioral health providers and criminal justice personnel.
- Cross-System Consultation. A comprehensive public forensic mental health system has been created to meet the complex needs of justice-involved individuals with behavioral health challenges. BHJD offers subject matter expertise to criminal justice agencies and behavioral health agencies to navigate the interlocking systems by identifying gaps in care for Philadelphia’s public forensic behavioral health system and generating innovative solutions to fill these gaps. Where needed, BHJD provides oversight of specialized, provider-based initiatives that address these gaps. BHJD also utilizes its data analytic, continuous quality improvement, and research and policy
analysis capacities to serve as a monitor of the public forensic behavioral health system. It lends these capacities to justice and behavioral health partners, as needed.
BHJD's Units
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Initiatives
Coming soon