# A Trial of a Police-Mental Health Linkage System for Jail Diversion and Reconnection to Care

> **NIH NIH R01** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2021 · $277,259

## Abstract

The “criminalization” of persons with serious mental illnesses (SMI) is an extensively documented problem
across the U.S. Our ongoing R01 is testing the effectiveness of a new police–mental health (MH) “Linkage
System” that, through a prior NIMH R34 project, was shown to be feasible to implement and to be acceptable
among end-users. The Linkage System consists of 3 steps. First, individuals with SMI and a history of criminal
justice (CJ) involvement give special consent to be included in a database in the state’s CJ information system,
and consent for an officer to have a telephone conversation with a Linkage Specialist at the local public MH
system where they are in treatment. Second, when an officer runs an enrolled participant’s name or identifiers
as part of an inquiry / background check during an encounter, the officer receives an electronic message that
the person is in MH treatment, and to call a number for more information. Third, the Linkage Specialist, who is
a licensed MH professional, receives the call and assists the officer by thinking through observed behaviors
and potential resolutions. In some cases when an arrest is not obligatory, the officer may choose to refer to or
transport to MH services instead of making an arrest (and in a number of cases the individual is reconnected to
care) because of the information provided. Partnering with our CJ partner, Georgia Bureau of Investigation
(which houses Georgia’s CJ databases/information system), as well as 4 public MH agencies covering 25
counties in Georgia, we are conducting a randomized trial of the Linkage System involving 1,600 outpatients
with SMI. We are testing the hypotheses that patients randomized to the Linkage System will: (1) be less likely
to be arrested, (2) have fewer arrests (both based on administrative (rap sheet) data provided by GBI), and (3)
be less likely to have gaps in outpatient MH services, as evidenced by fewer absences from care of >3 months
(based on data from the MH agencies’ EMRs). We are examining effects of 4 potential moderators: urban v.
rural patient site, male v. female sex of the patient, psychotic v. mood disorder, and lower v. higher risk of
arrest. If proven effective, we will prepare a toolkit for other jurisdictions to implement the Linkage System. In
this Competing Revision, the research team seeks supplemental funds to conduct in-depth qualitative
interviews with 50 enrolling R01 participants (and up to 50 of their close family members) to answer the
following questions that must be addressed in order to create new solutions to criminalization: (1) Why do
outpatients with SMI have especially high scores on “criminal sentiments,” which are known to be predictive of
CJ recidivism? (2) What are patients’ (and family members’) experiences with three specific misdemeanor
charges that likely contribute substantially to criminalization? (3) What are patients’ (and family members’)
preferences among several crisis response models (aside from pol...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10107492
- **Project number:** 3R01MH117191-03S2
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** MICHAEL T COMPTON
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $277,259
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2018-09-07 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10107492

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10107492, A Trial of a Police-Mental Health Linkage System for Jail Diversion and Reconnection to Care (3R01MH117191-03S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10107492. Licensed CC0.

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