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 In addition to partnership with qualified clinical and behavioral health providers, justice and law enforcement agencies are now offering a number of recovery-oriented, supportive, and direct forensic behavioral health services that effectively change the face of front-line response. 

Introduction

Nationally, substance use disorder, opioid use disorder and behavioral health practitioner employment is projected to grow 18 percent between 2025 and 2035, compared with 3 percent across all occupations. And, behavioral health and substance use social work is projected to grow 10 percent over the same period (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2026a, 2026b). For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 50,500 job openings per year for this occupation, including growth plus replacement needs.

These broader workforce trends are occurring alongside changes within justice agencies, wherein roles traditionally centered on justice functions are increasingly incorporating behavioral health responsibilities—and new demand for in-house hires is emerging as more jurisdictions require people with substance-use disorders to receive counseling as part of a court-order or probation condition. Several key institutional and service delivery pressures are driving this shift.

·       Gaps in community treatment access. Access to community-based treatment services is particularly complicated among rural and isolated communities by factors like treatment capacity, transportation, provider availability, and coordination across systems complicate access to community-based treatment services.

·       Pressure to expand diversion and reduce unnecessary justice-system involvement. Justice agencies remain a frequent first responder to individuals experiencing behavioral health crises. In many cases, justice agencies can offer a prompt and effective intervention without triggering need for further justice involvement..

·       A need for greater continuity and visibility into outcomes. When behavioral-health services are entirely external to the justice agency, there may be limited visibility into whether participants connect with services, remain engaged, complete programming, or achieve intended outcomes.

In response to these and other needs, justice and law enforcement agencies are expanding the scope of structural interventions designed to maintain engagement with individual behavioral-health care outcomes. For example, probation and community corrections departments are employing behavioral-health specialists. Courts are hiring treatment coordinators and case managers. Sheriff's offices and correctional systems are employing clinicians, recovery specialists, and reentry navigation personnel. Additionally, agencies are restructuring supervision-only roles to include further engagement, navigation, recovery support, case coordination, screening, diversion, and continuity of care.

Here, leaders need to consider a range of complex questions like, "What services can we offer internally?", "Who is qualified to provide services?", "What are our statutory requirements?", and "Do we need facility licensures?" In short, in addition to ensuring robust partnerships with qualified behavioral-health providers, justice agencies can offer a wide range of supportive and recovery-oriented behavioral-health services without becoming a state-licensed clinical treatment provider. This article presents findings from a multi-state statutory and regulatory requirements assessment, examining which behavioral-health services that justice agencies may provide directly and which may trigger additional requirements.

Methodology

To classify distinctions, we developed a brief inventory of behavioral health functions and organized them into three service categories: (1) Functions that can generally be justice-led; (2) Functions that may be justice-led but warrant additional regulatory review; and (3) Functions that involve additional clinical, licensing, credentialing, or other regulatory requirements. To inform these classifications, we conducted a multi-state review, cross-referencing justice-agency functions with behavioral health statutes, administrative regulations, licensing requirements, and agency guidance across seven Eastern states: Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey. The review focused on where states draw regulatory distinctions between supportive and justice-led functions, services that may become regulated depending on their structure or delivery, and clinical behavioral health services subject to more explicit regulatory requirements. Our review is focused on whether each function is currently treated as clinical treatment, a separately regulated behavioral-health service, a credentialed or supervised activity, or a supportive/navigation function that may be performed outside a licensed treatment program. For this, we reviewed administrative regulations, licensing requirements, professional and program requirements, and other official agency guidance.

Findings

Tables 1 and 2 present results from the described multi-state statutory search. Table 1 identifies supportive, administrative, navigation, education, and other functions that seem to uniformly qualify as appropriate under justice agency authorizations. Table 2 distinguishes between two levels of regulatory consideration. The first identifies gray-line functions that may trigger additional requirements depending on how the service is defined, structured, staffed, supervised,  and delivered. Because states regulate these functions differently, agencies should conduct state-specific statutory and regulatory review when planning to adopt them to determine additional applicable licensing requirements. The second category in Table 2 identifies clinical assessment and treatment functions for which justice agencies should expect professional, organizational, facility, or program-level behavioral-health regulatory requirements to apply. Note that any services for which the agency seeks Medicaid or other third-party reimbursement may trigger separate provider enrollment and other payer requirements.

State-specific review is particularly important for functions like case management, peer support, screening, crisis services, and behavioral interventions, which may be defined or regulated behavioral-health services or subject to credentialing. The regulatory line is less clear for functions such as case management, screening, service planning, peer support, and crisis response because these activities can exist on either side of the behavioral-health licensing boundary. In Virginia, for example, behavioral-health regulations define case management as assessing an individual's needs, developing an individualized service plan, linking the individual to services and supports, coordinating those services, and monitoring their delivery. A justice agency coordinating a participant's treatment referral and monitoring completion for diversion or supervision purposes is not necessarily operating the same service as a behavioral-health provider conducting ongoing case management. This same gray-line analysis applies to screening, peer and recovery support, behavioral programming, crisis functions, and medication-related coordination. The more the agency's role moves from navigation, referral, coordination, and justice-program support toward individualized behavioral-health care, planning or treatment, the more important it becomes important to determine whether state behavioral-health licensing, credentialing, supervision, or program requirements have been triggered.

Conclusions

As justice agencies take on greater responsibility for behavioral-health and community response, partnership, data, and program administration become core operational infrastructure. Agencies must be able to coordinate providers, manage cross-system referrals, follow individuals across programs and service transitions to identify gaps in care and monitor performance. A justice agency does not have to become a STATE licensed behavioral-health treatment provider or seek Medicaid reimbursement to operate meaningful behavioral-health-related services. Justice agencies can generally operate case supervision, referral, navigation, diversion, and reentry services within their governmental authority. Additional licensing, certification, or clinical authorization may be required when the agency itself begins providing regulated behavioral-health treatment. The regulatory threshold rises substantially when the agency moves from coordination and support into clinical diagnosis, psychotherapy, SUD treatment, medication treatment, or medical withdrawal management.

ARETGroup is a trusted partner for justice and law enforcement agencies, contract research and academic institutions. We help justice agencies build needed data infrastructure to engage communities and transform lives. ARETGroup’s Horizon platform offers frictionless collaboration among justice agencies, NGOs, and other providers seeking to support stronger referral management, cross-agency coordination, performance monitoring, and accountability across the continuum of justice and community-based services.

This comparison is intended as a planning and service-design framework, not as legal advice. Whether a justice agency may directly operate a particular service depends on the service definition, state and local law, agency authority, staff credentials. See the references below for further information.

State Regulatory Reference Links