Adults

First responders, including EMS (Emergency Medical Services), law enforcement, firefighters, and crisis hotline personnel, are often the first to encounter individuals in behavioral health crises. In these moments, behaviors like agitation, confusion, or withdrawal may be misread, resulting in unnecessary use of force, incarceration, or hospitalization.

This course introduces and expands on core de-escalation skills, offering relational engagement techniques to help you assess situations in real time, reduce harm, and guide individuals toward appropriate care. Whether you're new to de-escalation or looking to deepen your approach, you'll learn to read behavioral cues, make informed decisions, and use connection as a path to meaningful support.

Through real-world scenarios and development of strategies for building local resource networks, this training strengthens your ability to divert individuals away from the criminal justice system or the ER (emergency room) and into services that support long-term stability.

The United States admits millions of individuals to local jails and thousands to prisons each year (Mueller & Kluckow, 2025; Zeng, 2023). Many enter the system with behavioral health needs. Because these conditions often worsen without consistent treatment, effective reentry planning becomes essential. Yet only a portion of individuals receive coordinated support as they transition back into the community, leaving many without the treatment, medications, or follow-up care needed to stabilize their health and reduce their risk of returning to custody. For parole and probation officers, this raises an important reflection: how might outcomes improve when even one person has your guidance and support during reentry?

To build on the strong work you already do in this field, this course provides additional strategies to deepen support, strengthen connection, and help individuals move toward healthier futures. It also illustrates some of the real challenges people may experience during reentry.

People with mental illness deserve adequate, effective treatment that addresses their needs and helps them remain in their communities. National estimates suggest almost half of people in jail (44%) report having a previous mental health diagnosis, and 26% showed symptoms of serious psychological distress within the last month (SAHMSA, 2024). These numbers may be even higher in Colorado, with reports suggesting that more than 50% of people in Colorado county jails have a serious mental illness (Boulder County Reporting Lab, 2023).

This course equips Colorado clinicians working in jails with the awareness and knowledge required to better meet the needs of their caseload and enhance behavioral health services for individuals who are incarcerated with mental illness. Jail clinicians will examine how treating criminogenic risk factors in combination with mental illness can improve antisocial thinking and behavior patterns, ultimately reducing future involvement in the legal system and psychiatric hospitalizations.

This course will emphasize therapeutic and group therapy elements and describe the clinical considerations for effectively treating criminogenic risk factors in combination with mental illness. Upon completion, you will be better prepared to apply interventions based on empirical evidence in jail settings.