Police Response Models for Handling Encounters with People Suffering from Mental Illnesses: a Survey of Police Chiefs
- PDF / 416,420 Bytes
- 22 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 23 Downloads / 172 Views
Police Response Models for Handling Encounters with People Suffering from Mental Illnesses: a Survey of Police Chiefs Chunghyeon Seo 1 & Bitna Kim 1 & Nathan E. Kruis 2 Received: 2 August 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020/ # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2020
Abstract To effectively respond to scenes involving people with mental illnesses (PWMI), many police departments in the United States have implemented police response models (PRMs) that improve officer training on mental illness and/or solicit cooperation with mental healthcare providers. No existing study has focused on examining police chiefs’ attitudes toward the effectiveness of PRMs. To help fill this gap in the literature, the current study analyzed survey data (N = 190) collected from police chiefs working in Pennsylvania to estimate the extent of favorability toward PRMs and to examine if the predictors of favorability toward PRMs vary across types of PRMs (i.e., CIT, co-response models, and other models with reduced training hours). Findings revealed that police chiefs showed favorable attitudes toward the CIT and co-response models, and their perceptions of these models were associated with the adoption of a PRM in their agencies. Further, results from multivariate analyses indicated that there are some differences in the factors that predict chiefs’ favorability toward the CIT and co-response models compared to other models with reduced training hours (OMRTH). Potential policy implications and directions for future research in light of these findings are discussed within. Keywords Police response model . Police chiefs . Crisis intervention team . Co-response
models . Mental illness
* Chunghyeon Seo [email protected] Bitna Kim [email protected] Nathan E. Kruis [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
American Journal of Criminal Justice
Introduction Historically, law enforcement training academies have devoted little curricular attention to people with mental illnesses (PWMI) (Ellis, 2014). This lack of training on diffusing situations involving PWMI has caused many problems, including over-arrest (Skeem and Bibeau, 2008; Walker and Katz, 2018) and police use of deadly force for encounters with PWMI (Gur, 2010; Lurigio, Smith and Harris, 2008; Markowitz, 2011; Morabito and Socia, 2015). For instance, the Treatment Advocacy Center (2018) reported that police officers are 16 times more likely to shoot PWMI compared to people who do not suffer from mental illnesses. As a result, there have been a number of widely publicized police settlements with family members of the deceased PWMI due to excessive force (Dardick, 2016; Lau, 2017). To effectively handle situations involving PWMI, many police departments across the country have implemented a police response model (PRM), including 1) Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, 2) co-response models between the police and mental health treatment providers, and 3) other models with reduced training hours (OMRTH) (e.g., 2-h or 8-h). While there has been a bro
Data Loading...
