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The Role of CCBHCs in Reducing Incarceration
For decades, jails and prisons have functioned as the nation's largest, and least appropriate, providers of mental health and substance use treatment. People with untreated serious mental illness (SMI) and substance use disorders (SUD) often move repeatedly through arrest, incarceration, release,...
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Closing the Re-Entry Gap: Connecting Justice-Involved Individuals to Addiction Treatment
Individuals in incarcerated settings are found to have an increased risk of overdose and drug-related injury during community re-entry, with the first two weeks carrying the most risk (Hartung et al., 2023). Justice-involved individuals face significant barriers to accessing substance use services...
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Still Arresting Our Way Out: Why New York Needs to Expand Its Diversion Courts
For decades, New Yorkers dealing with mental health and substance use issues have been funneled into our jails and prisons and denied the treatment they need to get better. Far too often, local correctional facilities end up serving as the default mental health provider. New York is not alone in...
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Financial Stability: Building Practical Infrastructure for Reentry
James1 completes a 90-day residential treatment program with a job interview set up for the coming week and a probation meeting he cannot miss. He also leaves with thousands of dollars in outstanding legal financial obligations (LFOs), a suspended driver's license related to unpaid fees, and no...
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The Director Who Was Once the Intake: What Justice-Involved Clients Taught Me From Both Sides of the Desk
I have occupied three chairs in the behavioral health system's relationship with justice-involved people: the client in the residential program with a record behind him, the counselor across the desk, and the director deciding who gets the bed. Most practitioners spend a career in one of those...
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When Tomorrow Cannot Compete: Why Immediate Relief Can Eclipse a Future That Still Matters
Someone can understand the consequences of substance use, love the people their substance use is hurting, and still reach for immediate relief. From the outside, the choice can look like proof that the person does not care enough. From inside the moment, what matters in that later life may no...
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The Treatment Handoff Is Part of Care
A person can complete withdrawal management successfully and still lose the next step of care. A residential client can make meaningful progress and then leave without a confirmed outpatient appointment. A receiving program may know that a referral is coming but lack the medication list, risk...
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The Kitchen Problem No One Talks About in Behavioral Health: How Residential Treatment Programs Are Rethinking Food Service and What It Means for the People in Their Care
Someone enters residential treatment. They have made one of the hardest decisions of their life. They give up their phone, their schedule, their routine. For the next 28 to 90 days, almost every aspect of their day is structured for them. When they wake up. When they go to therapy. When they...
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Medication-Assisted Treatment on the Ground: How Federal Policy Shifts Are Reshaping Outreach in Brooklyn
Opioid use remains a significant public health threat in the United States, with nearly 80,000 opioid‑involved overdoses reported in 2023—accounting for 76% of all overdoses that year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025). As Substance Use Disorder (SUD) continues to affect more...
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The Bar for Behavioral Health Care Just Got Higher: The Workforce to Meet It Is Shrinking
On April 6, 2026, New Jersey adopted NJAC 10:36, new integrated behavioral health program service standards that replaced three separate regulatory frameworks with a single unified standard. Every ambulatory licensed behavioral health program in the state must now coordinate physical and behavioral...
