Sponsors (11)
The bill invests federal funds to standardize and expand crisis-response training for law enforcement—likely improving immediate safety in encounters with people in behavioral-health crises—while relying on limited grant dollars and administrative requirements that may burden small agencies and do little to expand community-based clinical crisis care.
People experiencing mental-health or substance-use crises and people with disabilities face a lower risk of injury or death because law enforcement and corrections officers will receive evidence-based behavioral crisis response training.
State, local, and Tribal agencies (and the communities they serve) can obtain federal grant funding — including support for travel and lodging — to pay for crisis-intervention training that they might otherwise be unable to afford, easing local budget pressure.
Most grant dollars will go to direct training delivery because administrative costs are capped, increasing the share of funds that reach trainees and reducing wasteful overhead.
People in crisis and local communities may see limited improvements in overall crisis care because the program focuses federal money on law-enforcement training rather than expanding community-based behavioral-health services, hiring clinicians, or supporting co-responder models.
Small, rural, and otherwise capacity-constrained agencies may struggle to apply for and administer grants due to matching requirements, staffing counts, incident-data and reporting requirements, imposing an administrative and financial burden that could limit access to funds.
Taxpayers and state grant recipients could see up to $10 million per year diverted from other Subpart grant programs to fund this new training program, reducing funds available for other priorities.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes DOJ grants to fund evidence-based behavioral health crisis response training for law enforcement/corrections officers, with provider standards, reporting, and a possible $10M annual reservation.
Introduced March 31, 2025 by Marcia Carolyn Kaptur · Last progress March 31, 2025
Creates a Department of Justice grant program to pay for evidence-based behavioral health crisis response training for law enforcement and corrections officers, including associated travel and lodging, subject to available appropriations. The Attorney General must set provider qualification standards, require program and agency information in applications, limit administrative spending, and require annual reporting and audit access by recipients. The law also allows the Attorney General to reserve up to $10 million per year from an existing subpart to run the new grant program. Grants must supplement, not replace, other State, local, or Tribal funding.