Table 2.

Recommendations for Addressing the Harmful Interplay between Mental Health Care and Criminal Justice

Initiative	Action
Enhancing care for justice-involved individuals	Forensic Evaluation Contexts  • Describe relevant risks and needs beyond the use of a risk assessment measure, especially considering areas in which risk assessment measures may overestimate risk based on race (see Riggs-Romaine & Kavanaugh, 2019)  • Consider the risks and needs of an individual client in light of the systemic factors that may contribute to recidivism and further penetration into the justice system (e.g., community policing)  • Consider how to be culturally sensitive in assessments and acknowledge biases against BIPOC individuals within risk assessments: Include information about a client’s race and ethnic backgrounds in the historical and background sections of a report, in a matter similar to discussing a history of trauma or information about an individual’s housing/community, rather than simply including it in the first line of identifiers (e.g., name, race, age, gender of the client; APLS Practice Committee, 2021)  • Do not attempt to remain “color blind” out of a desire to be “objective”, as doing so can be especially harmful to the individuals with whom we work by demonstrating an increase in racial bias (Richeson & Nussbaum, 2004; Holoien & Shelton, 2012) and a reduction in trust legitimacy of evaluators by Black individuals (Apfelbaum, Sommers, & Norton, 2008)
	Therapeutic Contexts  • Establish relationships with community partners to foster warm hand-offs to quality mental health care for individuals re-entering the community after incarceration or for those actively justice-involved but not incarcerated (e.g., on parole or probation)  • Acknowledge and attempt to disentangle the role(s) that forensic psychologists fill openly with justice-involved clients in early sessions of therapy  • Act with therapeutic jurisprudence - i.e., supporting the “overarching dignity of clients and the community while attending to the core values of freedom and well-being” of justice involved individuals (Birgen & Perlin, 2009, p. 262) - in order to deliver services in correctional institutions with the promotion of human values as enacted in law (for a lengthy discussion on therapeutic jurisprudence, see Birgen & Perlin, 2009)  • Recognize the ways in which the correctional system and the businesses that profit within the system may affect the roles psychologists are asked to play  • Become familiar with and adhere to the Specialty Guidelines of Forensic Psychology (APA, 2013) and Standards for Psychology Services in Jails, Prisons, Correctional Facilities, and Agencies (IACFP, 2010), which discuss expectations, principles, and specific actions by which forensic and correctional psychologists should work within the adversarial and, at times, coercive systems, with a focus on minimizing emotional and physical harm and maximizing competence in mental health service delivery  • Increase access to practica opportunities in forensic settings for trainees, ensuring that the above recommendations are incorporated into training and supervision  • Develop measurable clinical competencies based on the above recommendations to appropriately evaluate trainees in forensic settings
Divest from police involvement in mental health response	• Leverage professional networks to compose a joint letter or petition for policy-makers calling for divestment from police, investment in community-based crisis response staffed by trained mental health professionals, and increased funding for mental health programming more broadly  • Develop and conduct surveys of police presence - and employee and client psychological experiences of police presence - in psychologists’ workplaces and local mental health establishments
Establish alternative systems of community-based mental health response	• Partner with existing alternative community-based mental health response programs to conduct program evaluation and research, in effort to establish evidence-based practices for programs of this type  • Offer to consult with community agencies initiating these programs to ensure they are incorporating best practices in mental health response based on extant research  • Develop and implement strategies for educating the public – and, perhaps specifically, persons untrained in mental health response likely to encounter strangers experiencing mental health issues (e.g., customer-facing employees) – on how to recognize a mental health issue and call for appropriate responders