In Focus: Collecting and Analyzing Baseline Data – Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program

In Focus: Collecting and Analyzing Baseline Data is a new brief from the Stepping Up partners designed to help counties collect and analyze baseline data on the prevalence of people in their jails who have serious mental illnesses (SMI), specifically along the recommended four key measures: (1) the number of people booked into jail who have SMI; (2) their average length of stay in jail; (3) the percentage of people with SMI who are connected to treatment; and (4) their recidivism rates. Once collected, these baseline data allow county leaders to identify the system improvements and programs needed to reduce the number of people in jail who have SMI and provide benchmarks against which progress can be measured.