Evaluation of Chicago Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team for Youth Training: Year 1

• NCJ Number: 247343
• Author(s): Rebecca R. Campbell
• Date Published: July 2012
• Length: 38 pages
• Grant Number(s): 09SUB90055
• Sponsoring Agency: Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
• Corporate Author: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority
• Sale Source: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report presents the results of an evaluation of the first year of the Chicago Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team for Youth Training program.

Abstract

Key findings from this first-year evaluation of the Chicago Police Department's Crisis Intervention Team for Youth (CIT-Y) Training program include the following: overall, participants were very satisfied with the CIT-Y training content and delivery, with 57 percent of the comments on the course evaluation surveys being positive; focus group participants indicated they applied CIT-Y techniques in their work, particularly within schools and housing developments; barriers to implementing the training curriculum included lack of program awareness and department support, inefficient hospital protocols for youth mental health assessments, and uncooperative parents, school administrators, teachers, and security personnel; focus group participants suggested creating a CIT-Y unit within CPD (Chicago Police Department), establishing mental health assessment protocols with community hospitals, and diversifying the groups of professionals participating in the training; and some focus group participants identified topics that needed expansion in the course, including how to appropriately respond to uncooperative teachers, parents, and supervisors, and department procedures that should be followed when transporting youth to hospitals for mental health assessments. Chicago's CIT-Y training program is a 40-hour course offered over 5 days that introduces police officers to the complex issues surrounding youth mental illness. The purpose of the training is to assist law enforcement in diverting youth with mental illness from the juvenile justice system and into community-based treatment services. This evaluation assessed the components of the program, officers' satisfaction with curriculum content and delivery, officers' retention of the training material, intentions for using the information received during training, and the actual application of the training components. A set of recommendations for improving the content and outcomes of the program are included in the report. Tables, references, and appendixes