Almost all jail inmates with mental illness will leave correctional settings and return to the community. Inadequate transition planning puts jail inmates who entered the jail in a state of crisis back on the streets in the middle of the same crisis. The outcomes of inadequate transition planning include the compromise of public safety, an increased incidence of psychiatric symptoms, hospitalization, relapse to substance abuse, suicide, homelessness, and rearrest. Although there are no outcomes studies to guide evidence-based transition-planning practices, there is enough guidance from the multisite studies of the organization of jail mental health programs to create a best practice model. This article presents one such model.
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