Mental Health Diversion: How Kalamazoo is Building a Better Path

Mental illness is one of the leading drivers of incarceration in the country. Decades of underfunding community-based psychiatric care, combined with rising rates of untreated mental illness and substance use disorder, have left law enforcement and courts absorbing a crisis they are not equipped to manage. The result is a system that is expensive, inhumane, and demonstrably ineffective at improving either public safety or public health. Mental health diversion is an approach that aims to change that, and Kalamazoo County has built one of the most comprehensive diversion infrastructures in the region to do exactly that.

What Is Mental Health Diversion?

Mental health diversion refers to a set of strategies and programs that redirect people with mental illness away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment and support. Rather than processing someone through arrest, prosecution, and incarceration, which rarely addresses underlying mental health needs and often makes them worse, diversion connects people to the care they actually need. Mental health diversion does not excuse harm or ignore accountability but rather treats the whole person to ensure that harmful behavior does not persist.

Diversion can happen at many points along the justice continuum: before law enforcement ever makes contact, at the moment of a crisis call, during booking, in the courtroom, or even after sentencing. The goal is always to connect people to community-based care.

A Public Health Approach to Public Safety

Mental health populations in jails skyrocketed after 2020, as pandemic-era isolation, economic disruption, and the collapse of community supports sent rates of untreated psychiatric illness soaring. Jails have essentially become the largest mental health facilities across U.S. counties.

The data from Kalamazoo reflect a national crisis in microcosm. A local study that screened nearly 1,400 defendants for mental health needs found exceptionally high rates of anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, mania, and psychosis — conditions that can be treated in the community but that languish, and worsen, behind bars.

People who experience poverty, housing instability, food insecurity, unemployment, and discrimination are significantly more likely to experience mental health symptoms. Anti-poverty programs, stable housing, and economic opportunity are, in a very real sense, mental health interventions. When communities invest in those foundations, mental illness rates decline. When they don't, the justice system absorbs the consequences.

The Sequential Intercept Model: Kalamazoo's Framework

Kalamazoo County approaches mental health diversion through what's known as the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM), a framework that identifies every point along the justice pathway where intervention is possible and maps community resources to each one. Rather than relying on a single program, the SIM treats diversion as a system-wide responsibility shared across law enforcement, courts, behavioral health providers, housing agencies, and community organizations.

Kalamazoo's SIM infrastructure spans the six key intercept areas:

Intercept 0: Community Services and Crisis Care

The earliest intercept happens before law enforcement is ever involved. This is the realm of community-based mental health services, substance use treatment, crisis lines, and primary care, systems that, when well-resourced and accessible, prevent crises from escalating to the point of any justice contact at all. Intercept 0 includes the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, mobile crisis teams dispatched independently of law enforcement, walk-in crisis centers, and robust outpatient behavioral health care. When these systems are strong, many people never reach the justice pathway in the first place.

Intercept 1: Law Enforcement and First Response

When a crisis does require a first responder, how that contact unfolds matters enormously. Integrating 9-1-1 emergency dispatch with 9-8-8 means that calls involving mental health can be triaged and routed to the most appropriate responder from the outset, whether that is a clinician, a co-responder team, or a mobile crisis unit. Co-responder programs pair trained mental health clinicians with law enforcement officers on crisis calls, so that someone in psychiatric crisis is assessed by someone with clinical expertise. Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training equips officers to de-escalate mental health situations and connect people to services rather than defaulting to arrest.

Intercept 2: Initial Detention and Initial Hearings

For individuals who are detained, this intercept encompasses the critical hours between arrest and first court appearance. Jail diversion programs, diversion specialists stationed at booking, and mental health screening at intake can identify individuals whose needs would be better served in a treatment setting than a cell. Connections with community mental health services made at this stage may be able to redirect someone away from justice processing.

Intercept 3: Courts and Legal Support

For those who proceed further into the justice system, specialty court programs offer structured pathways to treatment rather than purely punitive outcomes. Mental health court, veterans treatment court, and other problem-solving dockets are designed to address the root causes of justice involvement rather than simply adjudicating the charge. These courts operate on a treatment-first model: individuals are connected to psychiatric care, substance use treatment, and case management while their legal matter is pending, with the possibility of reduced charges or case dismissal upon successful completion. Legal support, including public defenders trained to identify mental health needs and advocate for diversion, is a critical part of making this work equitably.

Intercept 4: Reentry from Jails and Prisons

For individuals who are incarcerated, the work of diversion continues inside facilities and intensifies at the moment of release. Without a plan, people leaving jail or prison with untreated mental illness are at high risk of rapid decompensation and return to the justice system. Effective supports at this intercept include in-facility behavioral health services, medication continuity, and reentry planning that begins well before release. Connecting individuals to Medicaid, community mental health, and peer support before they walk out the door dramatically improves outcomes and reduces the likelihood of reincarceration.

Intercept 5: Community Corrections and Community Support

The final intercept encompasses people under community supervision — probation, parole, or other post-release monitoring — as well as those fully discharged from the justice system who need sustained support to remain stable. Housing is the cornerstone of this intercept. A person released from supervision with nowhere safe to go, no income, and no support network is, statistically speaking, likely to cycle back. Strong diversion infrastructure at this stage includes housing pathways specifically designed for justice-involved individuals with mental illness, such as supportive housing, rapid rehousing, and bridge housing that can absorb someone immediately upon release. 

Wraparound supports that help individuals gain stability, such as healthcare, employment support, and benefits access, can be instrumental in helping to prevent justice involvement in the future.

Overcoming Gaps through Cross-System Collaboration

One of the greatest challenges of implementing the SIM is  Housing and transportation infrastructure is often inadequate to meet the volume of need, leaving people who are successfully diverted without the stable foundation required for recovery to take hold. Crisis stabilization capacity is frequently stretched thin, with beds and clinical staff in short supply precisely when demand is highest. Emergency departments, already operating at or beyond their limits, continue to serve as a default safety net for psychiatric crises. And across all of these systems, data remains fragmented across agencies in ways that make it difficult to track outcomes, identify gaps, and make the case for investment. 

One thing Kalamazoo is doing exceptionally well is bringing together partners across behavioral health, law enforcement, courts, housing, transportation, and healthcare to tackle these adaptive challenges together. They recognize that highly effective mental health diversion cannot be a single program but rather a community deciding together that the measure of a just society is how it treats its most vulnerable members at their most vulnerable moments. The success of this model will be evident by fewer unnecessary arrests, faster crisis response, and improved community safety.

Is your organization working on mental health diversion? We can help! Next Generation Justice Consulting provides strategic planning, technical assistance, and coalition-building support to help organizations design community-based programs rooted in best practices.