British Naval Historian & Prolific Author.

beyond adseg (solitary) in CO Jails & looking @

​Assertive Community Treatment as the Alternative​



AdSeg in CO Jails & Assertive Community Treatment
  • we are seeking alternatives to AdSeg in CO Jails for people with Disabilities;
  • there will probably be multiple solutions needed;
  • in most CO Jails the threshold to get thrown into AdSeg is NOT danger to self or others it is much LOWER;
  • so it is always true, and here particularly true, that a case by case evaluation is needed 
  • having said that, there may be some people placed in AdSeg in CO Jails who could benefit from Assertive Community Treatment.
  • How would this actually play out? That's a good question.  Do the counties have to pay for this? Is Medicaid going to step up? Some combination?  That's the real challenge in all this -- AdSeg in CO Jails is NOT working -- BUT who is going to pay to fix it?

American College of Correctional physicians

​Beyond Administrative Segregation:

Rethinking Mental Health Treatment in Maximum Security Units

By Theresa M. Dronet, PhD​

"The Step-Down Unit program is modeled on the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) approach (Marx, Stein, and Test, 2003; Drake et al, 1998; Scott et al, 1995).

"The aim is to provide mental health services to patients in vivo, or where the patients live and work. The ACT program was developed to meet the needs of patients who found that they were not capable of applying skills they had learned in inpatient treatment when they returned to living in their communities.

"The idea was to move intensive mental health services to the place where the patients live and work, and for staff—working as a team—to be assertive in gaining the patients’ cooperation in the treatment. The ACT approach is able to help people who have not gained effective treatment from traditional approaches to mental health treatment.

"The target population is patients who have the most serious and intractable symptoms of mental illness and experience the greatest impairment in functioning.

"Because they have difficulties with basic, everyday, self-preservation skills and are involved with substance abuse, they find their way into the criminal justice system. ACT seemed the right model for the new step-down program at Unit 32."

http://societyofcorrectionalphysicians.org/corrdocs/corrdocs-archives/summer-2010/beyond-administrative-segregation-rethinking-mental-health-treatment-in-maximum-security-units