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Background
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's GAINS Center for Behavioral Health and Justice Transformation estimates some 800,000 persons with serious mental illness are admitted annually to U.S. jails. Moreover, a full 72 percent of those individuals also meet criteria for cooccurring substance use disorders.1 And, while one in every eight Americans suffers from mental illness, California provides almost no public psychiatric beds for its 38 million residents.2 Given such inadequate supply of inpatient placement options - even for persons needing only brief hospitalization to become stabilized - it is hardly surprising that many mentally ill individuals end up in county jails and state prisons. With 356,000 people with grave mental illness residing in prisons and jails, and only 35,000 such individuals in state mental hospitals, there are now 10 times more people with serious mental illness in prisons and jails than there are in state mental hospitals.3 Thus, law enforcement departments and jails have become de facto mental hospitals. To respond to this situation, jails need to offer inmate educational programming that answers the unique needs of this population.
The Education Based incarceration Unit
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) has committed itself to providing effective learning opportunities - not only academic and vocational, but behavioral as well - to all incarcerated men and women housed in its facilities. Qualifying inmates receive community-volunteer educational services through the Custody Division of the Inmate Services Bureau's Education Based Incarceration (EBI) unit. EBI programs meet the highest standards of educational best practices and are evaluated annually through quality assurance protocol.
Although no single course can treat severe mental illness, using currículums such as EBI's has been shown to improve in-custody behavior, reduce inmate violence and better the chance of postrelease success.4 Due to the growing population of mentally ill inmates, LASD's EBI unit has gradually and methodically expanded its offerings to meet their specific learning needs. Providing academic, vocational and life skills training to this population involves deploying a wide array of techniques and instruments. Combined corrective and mental health programming rests on cognitive behavioral therapy, sensitive teaching approaches and tools and particularly applicable courses such as moral reconation therapy. Together, these three pillars (along with appropriate medications and treatment through the Los Angeles...