How many jails provide essential mental health services?
In contrast to state prisons where inmates often stay for long periods of time, jails typically house people for short stays of 3 days or less, with most inmates leaving within 24 hours. Given that mental health treatment is not usually possible in such a short period, the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) defined four essential mental health services that are important for jails to provide: intake screening, evaluation, crisis intervention, and case management and discharge planning. CMHS used the 1993 Inventory of Local Jail Mental Health Services to assess how often jails provide these four essential mental health services. Among jails that provided any mental health services, slightly fewer than one-half (47%)* provided all four of the services. Larger facilities more often provided all of the essential services. Only about one-third of the smallest jails (Average Daily Population of less than 50 inmates) provided all essential mental health services. Among jails with at lea
