Credit: Submitted
Bucks County officials recently cut the ribbon to open the new Diversion, Assessment, Restoration and Treatment (DART) Center.
The DART Center in Doylestown Township, which serves the entire county, was designed to help people with serious mental health illnesses get out of jail and into a facility that can accurately treat them instead.
Within the DART Center, three distinct tracks have been created to help adults who suffer from mental illness, officials said.
The Community Integration track provides a space for individuals who need treatment and assistance in developing daily living skills. This track, which can provide for up to 16 individuals, encourages residents on how to foster a more independent way of living in their community.
Meanwhile, the Short-Term Assessment and Stabilization track offers a transitional assessment and referral process for those seeking short-term care. This program can serve up to eight individuals at a time.
Lastly, the Restoration of Competency Unit was designed for individuals within the criminal justice system who have been determined Incompetent to Stand Trial. This unit can serve up to four individuals.
The 23,000-square-foot facility also includes an industrial kitchen.
Officials said the ServSafe kitchen will be used to allow residents to earn a ServSafe certification once they complete a community integration program.
In total, the DART Center’s three programs can serve 28 people at once.
According to Bucks County Chief Operating Officer Margaret McKevitt, the DART facility has received full licensing approval from state regulators.
The center is the result of a 10-year vision that began in 2016 when the county’s criminal justice advisory board updated its examination of where individuals with serious mental illness and the criminal justice system intersected.
The building and opening of the center have faced various challenges over the last 10 years.
Though construction on the DART Center, which began in October 2023, on the grounds of the former Women’s Community Corrections Center, pandemic workforce problems and other issues resulted in a few challenges.
Credit: County of Bucks
The decision to demolish the former corrections center, rather than update the existing building, also changed the project’s game plan.
Bucks County Commissioner Vice Chair Bob Harvie, a Democrat, spoke on the decade-long project and how a tour the commissioners took of the women’s correctional facility six years ago left them questioning how the county could better use the underutilized property.
“What could we do on this spot that can make a difference?” Harvie said. “What can we do on this spot that has meaning to people who really, really need help at a time that might be the lowest in their lives, and serves a purpose, and helps law enforcement and the criminal justice system appropriately handle people who shouldn’t be in a prison but end up there because there’s nowhere else to go?”
In total, it cost $19.8 million to build the DART Center.
The project was funded through both federal and state funds. About $1.8 million came from Bucks County’s general fund, while additional funding also came through the American Rescue Plan Act and the federal government, officials said.
The DART facility will serve both Bucks County and Montgomery County.
Montgomery County, which will share beds within the Community Integration track, will receive ongoing funding from Magellan Behavioral Health.
Bucks County Commissioner Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the DART Center’s opening and made remarks about how this new facility can divert people from the criminal justice system and into a center that can accurately help treat their serious mental illness.
“We have wanted to do something about this problem to get people diverted from the criminal justice system,” Ellis-Marseglia explained. “But one piece of the puzzle was missing, and it’s this piece. It’s a place where everyone who has that serious mental illness can come and be diverted, be assessed, be restored, and get treatment.”
Ellis-Marseglia, a social worker, also noted how many individuals with mental illnesses have suffered because of a lack of adequate mental health resources seen over the decades — especially after the local mental health system was dismantled in the 1980s.
“So many people who bore the burden of a substandard mental health system, only to see it torn down in the 1980s and replaced with nothing,” Ellis-Marseglia said. “So the jails have become the de facto treatment for people with serious mental illness for four decades.”
Bucks County has long sought a solution to this problem.
In 2025 alone, individuals with a serious mental illness spent 50% more time incarcerated at the Bucks County Correctional Facility than individuals of the general population.
According to Donna Duffy Grimm, the administrator of Bucks County Behavioral Health/Developmental Programs, the DART Center addresses this disparity within the criminal justice system.
“We’re really hoping to impact those statistics,” Grimm said.
Harvie also reflected on the problem and how many correctional facilities have mental health facilities simply because there was no other option for a county to help mentally ill individuals within the criminal justice system.
“If you have someone who’s picked up by police because they’ve gotten themselves into trouble and they’re going through some kind of mental illness challenge, they end up going to a prison,” Harvie explained. “And a prison is not a mental health care facility.”
With the opening of the DART Center, county officials are hoping to see a real change where the criminal justice system and mental health intersect.
“Today marks an important milestone for Bucks County because we are not simply opening a building,” General Services Director Bernard Griggs said. “We are opening a pathway to a more compassionate, effective approach to mental health and criminal justice.”
The DART Center’s opening is the latest of Bucks County’s programs to help individuals in the criminal justice system who have serious mental health illnesses.
In 2020, the Human Services Co-Responders Program was launched, combining the forces of social workers and the Bensalem Police Department. The program embedded social workers with police officers when dealing with individuals who needed social services, rather than incarceration. Six years after its launch, this program has expanded to more than two dozen police departments throughout the county.
Bucks County also has several specialized court programs to better assist the community, including as Recovery Court, Wellness Court, and Veterans Treatment Court.
The GEO Group will manage day-to-day operations at the DART Center, while Bucks County’s Behavioral Health/Developmental Programs department will oversee the center.
Dr. Matthew Abraham, the senior director of Treatment and Program Development for GEO Group, attended the center’s opening event and spoke of DART’s mission.
“Right now, there’s a person, maybe more than one, who doesn’t even know that the DART center exists,” Abraham said. “They are somewhere hard in a cell somewhere, trying to get through another day that has told them they are too complicated to help. That person is going to find their way here. And when they do, they will walk through a door that says, we see you. You are worth all of this.”
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