Counties Aligning Health & Safety

Despite significant investment in behavioral health services and diversion programs, people with behavioral health needs are still cycling through the justice system at great human and financial cost. These individuals and their loved ones often report confusion and concern about whether and how the courts are considering mental health and substance use needs and addressing the untreated needs that led to their arrest in the first place.      

With no common playbook for who gets which interventions, local justice systems often struggle to respond to these concerns or adapt to evolving behavioral health capacity.

Making Every Dollar Count

To maximize the return on recent investments, local justice systems must update their policies and protocols, and counties need the right people and systems at the table to do it. Without an evidence-informed, cross-systems plan, counties risk spending millions only to maintain or worsen the status quo.

How Counties AHS Can Help

This county-focused initiative is part of the broader Aligning Health & Safety project, which works with state leaders to build local capacity and unlock new resources and supports. With funding from Arnold Ventures, the CSG Justice Center’s national experts can now help county commissioners, sheriffs, judges, attorneys, behavioral health administrators, and other county leaders pilot our new interactive tool to develop and implement a plan for spending, optimizing, and measuring the impact of investments in post-booking, pre-adjudication interventions to:

• Divert people who need care and do not pose a risk to public safety

• Treat behavioral health needs during incarceration

• Connect people to care, stable housing, and appropriate supervision upon release

The CSG Justice Center will provide hands-on support for a select number of counties to pilot this tool and:

• Build shared approaches to decision-making,

• Coordinate key stakeholders,

• Target the right interventions,

• Test new approaches, and

• Evaluate the long-term impact of changes.

Counties can’t afford to waste money—or time.

To learn more about this opportunity, view the application announcement.

Post-Booking Framework and Tool

The CSG Justice Center worked with a national advisory group to develop a new post-booking behavioral health framework that gives local leaders a common playbook of evidence-informed intervention options between jail booking and adjudication.

The following framework outlines behavioral health needs and criminal justice factors and how they can influence potential interventions to improve outcomes in public safety, behavioral health, and resource use. The framework can be applied to people in custody, people released to the community, or people who spend time in both.

With our help, county leaders can now use an interactive decision-making tool derived from this framework to identify the interventions best suited for your target population(s) and your local challenges.

Want to implement and tailor this tool to your county’s needs, services, and funding? Apply for our hands-on support before Friday, July 31, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. E.T. to generate real cost savings and improve outcomes.

The CSG Justice Center’s Counties Aligning Health & Safety initiative is funded and supported by Arnold Ventures.