Using Length of Stay to Prioritize Among Assessment Areas
This tool presents a broad range of complex issues that people who are incarcerated or being released from prison or jail commonly face. In prisons, where an individual is incarcerated for an average of two years, given sufficient resources, staff may have time to address each of these areas through assessment, programming, and referrals. In jail settings, however, where individuals are often held for only a few days or weeks and usually less than one year, it is not realistic to conduct in-depth assessments of every issue, let alone to address every issue.
Condensed periods of incarceration effectively mean that assessment, treatment, and discharge planning may all occur during one meeting. For example, the assessment phase for someone who is incarcerated for only 72 hours might include only cataloguing his or her psychosocial, medical, and behavioral needs and strengths; indeed, it may be no more than the initial screening process. In contrast, assessment for someone who is incarcerated for several months could be much more comprehensive, including periodic assessment, as well as information-gathering from third-party sources including courts, family members, and community-based service providers.
To ensure that individuals receive basic assessments, referrals, and care, administrators should develop a minimum standard of assessment for each individual that passes through the institution, regardless of his or her length of stay. Minimum standards may vary, but could include screenings for acute needs in the areas of physical health, suicide risk, mental health, substance abuse, medication, housing, and child welfare. Indeed, the health screening conducted in jail may be the most comprehensive that an individual has ever experienced, and should be used to connect him or her with community-based services such as health care, housing, and drug treatment.
For more information about jail re-entry, see the Urban Institute’s Jail Reentry Roundtable at http://www.urban.org/projects/reentry-roundtable/roundtable9.cfm.