People With Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: Answering a Cry for Help uses Dear Abby-style letters as source material to offer recommendations to professionals in the mental health and criminal justice fields working with individuals (and their families) who are at risk due to mental illness. The authors use specific, real-world cases to offer suggestions for interventions that can potentially provide alternatives to incarceration for those who do not pose a safety risk to the public.

The book is a practical, evidence-based guide, written by leaders in community psychiatry. It includes appendices of information on topics such as the Sequential Intercept Model used by the authors. It also provides extensive online resources for the criminal justice/mental health field.

Mark Munetz, M.D., the Margaret Clark Morgan Endowed Chair of Psychiatry at NEOMED, co-authored the book as a committee member of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. Dr. Munetz has a long and distinguished history of service in the field of mental health and criminal justice. As clinical director, he oversees the operation of the Ohio Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence (CJ CCoE), a national model to promote jail diversion alternatives for people with mental illness throughout Ohio.  Last fall, Centers of Excellence from nine states across the country met at NEOMED to address the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system.

The Ohio CJ CCoE is funded by a grant from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to the County of Summit Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board. The ADM Board contracts with the Northeast Ohio Medical University to operate the Center.