With support from the State Justice Institute, the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute is partnering with Fort Bend County and Brazoria County in Texas to advance The First 48 Initiative: Developing a Blueprint for Person-Centered and Care-Focused Adjudication.
This initiative focuses on connecting people to community-based care early, thereby reducing unnecessary incarceration for people with behavioral health (BH) needs. First 48 centers on the critical window of the first 48 hours after arrest, when decisions about detention are made and when people can be linked to care in lieu of incarceration.
Centered on this critical window and grounded in the research on the harmful impact of incarceration for people BH needs, First 48 focuses on building diversion options that return people with BH needs to the community and connects them to services post-arrest. In Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, local leaders, courts, hospitals, BH providers, and other stakeholders are collaborating to offer post-arrest diversion pathways by centering person-centered, care-focused adjudication. To support this system redesign, both counties are establishing Criminal Justice Coordinating Councils, which provide structure for data-informed planning, cross-system collaboration, and developing shared goals.
In Fort Bend County, the initiative emphasizes early identification of BH needs, legal advocacy at initial court appearances, and increased releases from jail. Brazoria County is focused on developing a crisis services facility and expanding post-arrest diversion options.
This work gives both counties a clearer path for increasing jail releases while connecting people to community-based care and offers a model for other communities.
November 1, 2023
The Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School and LaGratta Consulting LLC are conducting a randomized control trial examining the effects of in-person versus remote hearings for self-represented family law litigants in the 3rd Judicial District Court of Utah (Salt Lake County). The project intends to examine case outcomes and litigant experience in both …
October 1, 2023
In 2020, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) was awarded a State Justice Institute (SJI) Technical Assistance grant to retain the services of Catalis by Court Innovations, Inc. (Catalis) to assist the AOC with developing and implementing an online platform to resolve medical debt disputes in Hamilton County, TN, before a lawsuit is …
September 1, 2023
Rural communities face unique challenges that impact their ability to deliver fair and equitable justice. Despite these challenges, rural communities rely on their many strengths to address the needs of their residents. In 2021, the National Center for State Courts, in partnership with Rulo Strategies, launched the Rural Justice Collaborative (RJC) to showcase the strengths …
July 1, 2023
The National Judicial Network: A Lifeline Helping Judges Better Serve Human Trafficking Victims and Immigrant Victims of Crime and Abuse The National Judicial Network (NJN): Forum on Human Trafficking and Immigration in State Courts offers judges an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning and information sharing. Judges from all over the country who are interested in the …
June 1, 2023
The Good Judge-ment Podcast is an educational, web-based podcast for judges, lawyers, students and nerds of all kinds. The podcast started in 2016 as a supplement to ongoing educational programming for Georgia Superior Court judges. From that beginning, it has grown to a bi-weekly program with hundreds of subscribers and over 125 episodes. The hosts, …
May 1, 2023
With the certification of 64 resource judges and four court resource attorneys’ mid-summer 2022, the National Courts and Sciences Institute (NCSI) completed Phase 1 of a SJI-supported strategic initiative to discover ways to train judges and court personnel to cope with novel, changing, Covid Science in the Courtroom. Judges from 12 jurisdictions in coordinator-facilitated teams …