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Integrating Criminal Justice and Behavioral Health Data: Checklist for Building and Maintaining a Data Warehouse

NCJ Number
301823
Date Published
July 2021
Length
10 pages
Annotation

Recognizing that criminal justice policymakers and practitioners often interact with other community service systems relevant to the needs of offenders, the current resource provides a checklist for developing and maintaining a “data warehouse” that houses information from multiple community service agencies and organizations.

Abstract

 “Data warehouses” are central repositories that house information from multiple sources, can consolidate individual-level and system-level data, and enable data tracking in identifying relationships and trends. Information obtained from a data warehouse can be a valuable resource for a partnership between criminal justice and behavioral health agencies. Such a data-informed partnership can assist in diverting people with mental illness or substance-use disorders from the justice system to mental health or drug treatment services. The checklist provided in this resource will assist agencies involved in the criminal justice-behavioral health partnership assess their current information technology (IT) infrastructure and guide the development of a cross=system data warehouse. The checklist is designed to be completed in three phases as communities develop their data warehouse. These phases are planning, development, and implementation/maintenance. Once each phase is completed, the interagency group overseeing the warehouse should assess progress and agree on next steps before moving to the next phase.