Spokane regional council agrees to house Sequential Intercept Mapping work and form cross-system subgroups

On Sept. 10, 2025, the Spokane Regional Law and Justice Council voted to house the Sequential Intercept Mapping (SIM) work within the council and to pursue formation of cross-system subgroups to act on priorities identified in a March 2025 mapping update.

Policy Research Associates consultant Ashley Kreider, assistant director of public policy and research, briefed council members on the SIM framework, tracing the county’s work from an initial 2018 mapping through the March 2025 update. Kreider said the mapping identifies gaps at six “intercepts” where people with behavioral-health needs interact with the criminal justice system and produces a ranked set of priorities and an action plan for each priority.

Kreider told the council that the March 2025 mapping built on Spokane County’s prior work and on a 2024 city-level mapping. “We were conscious of a parallel effort from the city of Spokane’s 2024 mapping,” she said, and the report includes a crosswalk aligning priorities across county and city efforts. The mapping’s report and map, Kreider said, document gaps, recommended action steps, assigned responsibilities and suggested timelines.

Council members emphasized that coordination across agencies and systems was a recurring theme in the SIM work. Councilmember Robin (commenting during discussion) and others urged that any standing body overseeing SIM work include both criminal justice and community behavioral-health representation, plus subcommittees to drive concrete tasks rather than only high-level discussion.

Mike (co-chair, SRLJC) moved that the SIM model work be placed under the SRLJC so the council could “avail ourselves to the Board of County Commissioners and to the city administration and those that are involved to work collaboratively towards reaching some of these objectives.” The motion was seconded and carried by voice vote. The council recorded that the SRLJC will serve as the long‑running structure to host the SIM work and may delegate tasks or subgroups to other ad hoc bodies as appropriate.

Council members asked staff to pursue a professional facilitator to run the working groups and to avoid duplication with other bodies that are forming related efforts. Several members noted there are many overlapping stakeholder groups and suggested leaders coordinate across those groups so work is not fragmented.

The council requested that the full SIM report and slides from the presentation be distributed to members. Kreider said the report — which includes the full map, prioritized gaps and the action plans created during the March workshop — will be circulated to council members within a week.

The SRLJC will now move to establish cross-system subgroups and to coordinate with city and county partners to implement the action steps identified in the SIM report. The council did not set firm deadlines for subgroup formation during the meeting; members asked staff to return to the next meeting with proposed membership and facilitator options.