McLean County is a proud member of the Stepping Up Initiative:
Approximately 2 million times each year, people who have serious mental illnesses are admitted to jails across the nation. Almost three-quarters of these adults also have drug and alcohol use problem. Once incarcerated, individuals with mental illnesses tend to stay longer in jail and upon release are at a higher risk of returning to incarceration than those without these illnesses.
The human toll of this program - and its cost to taxpayers - is staggering. jails spend two to three times more money on adults with mental illnesses that require intervention than on those without those needs, yet often do not see improvements to public safety or these individuals' health. Although counties have made tremendous efforts to address this problem, they are often thwarted by significant obstacles, including operating with minimal resources and needing better coordination between criminal justice, mental health, substance use treatment, and other agencies. Without change, large numbers of people with mental illnesses will continue to cycle through the criminal justice system, often resulting in tragic outcomes for these individuals and their families, missed opportunities for connections to treatment, inefficient use of funding, and a failure to improve public safety.
Learn more: https://stepuptogether.org/