Introduction

The number of individuals legally committed to community corrections and probation sentences has increased dramatically in some years. This growing population of offenders experiences challenges in multiple domains of life, including rehabilitation or recidivism, housing, employment, education, and access to therapeutically effective and culturally relevant mental health care. Probation work in the American criminal justice system has evolved in the last century and a half. The structure and process of probation as a service have also grown from strictly law enforcement to include rehabilitation and care. Stigma has long been linked to those dealing with mental illness. The problem, therefore, is that Probationers with Mental Illness are at risk for the "double-stigma" of being labeled a criminal-deviant and also possessing the label of being mentally ill. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.