Gresham Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Project

About

An expansion project in which Gresham Police Department has partnered with Cascadia clinicians to improve their response to mental health crises in the Gresham community. RAP provides data gathering, visualization and analysis services.

Background

In 2017, a partnership was created between the Gresham Police Department (GPD), Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare (CBH), and the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice’s (DCJ) Research and Planning Team (RAP). This collaboration was made possible through the award of a Bureau of Justice Assistance Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Project grant designed to advance criminal justice reform. The funds from this grant were used to implement a joint police and clinician response team that would be tasked with responding to 911 calls related to mental health crises in the City of Gresham, Oregon. The officers and clinicians on the Gresham Service Coordination Team (GSCT) would provide the dual roles of deescalating the crisis situation and acting as a service coordinator in the days and weeks after the incident to provide additional support. This report explores the effects of the creation of the GSCT on diverting individuals experiencing mental illness away from the criminal justice system and on increasing these clients’ access to community resources.

Methodology

Data was collected between 6/1/2019 and 3/31/2020. This time period was chosen as it contained complete months in which the GSCT was fully operational. Prior to 6/1/2019, the team was still in its pilot phase and data was inconsistently available. Furthermore, data after 3/31/2020 was confounded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative data sources were combined using SQL. Data was checked and cleaned for reporting errors and missing values. Data analysis was conducted using R statistical software.