H.R. 1392 — Improving Mental Healthcare in the Re-Entry System Act of 2025

This section establishes the short title as the “Improving Mental Healthcare in the Re-Entry System Act of 2025.”

This section establishes, within 90 days after enactment, a Department of Justice grant program to support mental health screening and referral services for individuals entering eligible detention centers. The Attorney General may award competitive grants to States and localities that hire a mental health liaison staff member for each eligible detention center under their jurisdiction, submit a plan to the Advisory Board describing how the program will meet statutory criteria, and partner with the Advisory Board and an independent research organization to evaluate program impacts and share data on participation, arrests, arraignments, and incarceration rates. This section limits grant use to five activities: (1) developing and administering a brief mental health screening survey, (2) developing necessary technology to administer the survey, (3) hiring staff to administer the survey, (4) establishing a mental health outreach team to refer individuals with severe mental illness to local mental healthcare providers for assessment, admission when necessary, and support, and (5) paying outreach team salaries or overtime, including direct funding to prisons, jails, or mental health centers. As background, the program is designed to identify severe mental illness at intake and connect individuals to care before release or immediately after release. This section requires the screening survey to contain 5 to 10 questions based on the Brief Jail Mental Health Screen, to identify severe mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, to ask about symptoms and prior mental health medication or inpatient care, and to identify the individual’s place of residence. The survey must be administered by a trained staff member to all individuals entering the jail or prison and to all incarcerated individuals who entered before implementation. This section establishes a mental health outreach team composed of local mental healthcare professionals and clinicians, jail or prison staff when applicable, and a mental health liaison staff member who oversees the team. The team must be notified immediately when an individual is determined to need a referral and, when applicable, informed of the individual’s release date and trial date. If in-person contact is not made before release, the team must attempt telephone contact within 24 hours and no later than 48 hours after release, and must make at least 3 telephone contact attempts if in-person contact was not made before release.

This section directs the Director of the Bureau of Prisons to establish, not later than 90 days after enactment, a program substantially similar to the program established under section 2 to administer mental health screenings to individuals at intake into an eligible detention center and refer such individuals to mental health care providers before or immediately after exit from an eligible detention center, as applicable. (Thus, the Bureau of Prisons must create a screening-and-referral process for people entering and leaving covered detention facilities within 90 days.)

This section establishes, not later than 60 days after enactment, an Advisory Board to manage and administer the Program under section 2 and to evaluate and approve State and local plans, monitor Bureau of Prisons plans, provide technical assistance, publish a database of completed evaluations, convene a working group of mental health and corrections stakeholders, coordinate with mental health outreach teams, and reduce funding for grants that do not meet Program requirements. As background, the Program appears to support mental health screening and referral programs for individuals released from prison or jail, with the stated goals of reducing crime rates and improving employment and wage rates. The section also directs the Advisory Board to oversee required evaluations by contracting with independent research organizations to assess effects on arrest, arraignment, incarceration, employment, wage, and mental healthcare utilization rates. This section further requires the Advisory Board to provide technical assistance to the Bureau of Prisons, States, and localities in setting up and administering the Program and to identify evidence-backed models for mental health screening and referral programs. It also requires the Board, not later than 1 year after the Program begins, to conduct a process evaluation of a grant awarded under the Program by monitoring and evaluating implementation of surveys and referrals in each prison or jail to ensure compliance with the submitted plan. This section directs the Attorney General to appoint Advisory Board members with expertise in: (1) designing and administering mental health screenings and referrals for incarcerated individuals or those recently released; (2) mental healthcare within prisons or jails; or (3) rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental program evaluation. It authorizes the Attorney General to appoint as many members as deemed necessary.

This section directs the Attorney General to provide funding directly to the Advisory Board to contract with one or more independent research organizations, in partnership with the Bureau of Prisons, States, and localities, to evaluate whether each grant awarded under the Program is implemented effectively and to measure program impacts. It requires each grant recipient to conduct an impact evaluation not later than 1 year after receiving an award, using an independent research organization and Advisory Board oversight, to assess the effect of the survey-and-referral program on participant arrest, arraignment, and incarceration rates, employment and wage rates, and mental health care utilization at 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years after completion. The evaluations must use administrative data from State departments of public safety and labor, with States required to provide that data, and mental health provider data and, if necessary, outreach to participants for mental health utilization measures. It requires the evaluations to use randomized controlled experimental or quasi-experimental research designs, with randomized controlled designs preferred and additional resources available for those designs. It also requires the Advisory Board to maintain an updated database of evaluation results and program implementation information to create a repository of evidence on what drives impacts on crime, employment, and wages for future policymakers and program operators.

This section authorizes appropriations to the Attorney General of $100 million for fiscal year 2026, $110 million for fiscal year 2027, $120 million for fiscal year 2028, $130 million for fiscal year 2029, and $140 million for fiscal year 2030 to carry out the Act. It also directs the Attorney General to distribute the funds by using 90 percent for the grant program under sections 2 and 3, with 20 percent of that amount for the Bureau of Prisons for screening and referral implementation activities at Federal prisons, 20 percent for States as competitive grants for screening and referral implementation activities at State prisons, and 50 percent for localities as competitive grants for screening and referral implementation activities at locally administered jails. The remaining 10 percent is divided equally, with 5 percent for evaluation activities under section 5 and 5 percent for the Advisory Board to provide technical assistance to the Bureau of Prisons, States, and localities and to cover general operations under section 4.

This section establishes definitions for terms used in the Act, including “State,” “locality,” “mental healthcare provider,” “mental healthcare center,” “jail or prison administrator,” “law enforcement official,” “eligible detention center,” “severe mental illness,” “independent research organization,” “randomized control experimental research design,” “responses to the survey indicate severe mental illness,” and “quasi-experimental research design.” It defines “State” to include the 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands; “locality” to include cities, counties, townships, towns, boroughs, parishes, villages, and other general purpose political subdivisions; and “eligible detention center” to include prisons or jails administered by the Bureau of Prisons, a State, or a locality. It also defines the mental health-related terms used in the Act to describe licensed providers and facilities near jails or prisons, severe mental illness, and survey responses indicating severe mental illness. In addition, it defines the research terms used to evaluate the program, including independent research organizations and randomized or quasi-experimental study designs that compare participants who receive the survey and referral with control populations that do not.