Can Mental Health Professionals Help Reduce Crime?
When 911 operators in Denver receive calls about citizens acting irrationally, mental health professionals are sent along with paramedics to investigate the incidents—not armed police officers.
The city’s program is known as Support Team Assisted Response (STAR). At this stage, it’s only a pilot program, but the early results are promising and could portend a new, game-changing paradigm for the way municipalities manage acute psychiatric illness. In the eight city precincts where the program has been implemented, minor offenses have dropped by 34 percent. Some of these reductions are because mental health professionals are not issuing citations leading to arrests, but the data also suggests that the actual level of minor crimes dropped as well.
Many of the individuals in these circumstances tend to be agitated and in some form of an altered mental state. Armed police officers are trained to vigorously and verbally assert their authority and take command of interactions when they are dealing with individuals suspected of committing offenses. Such an approach is necessary and effective for an individual who is rational and misbehaving. With someone in an altered and possibly psychotic mental state, such an aggressive response may be experienced as dangerously threatening. As their agitation and fear escalate, the citizen’s unstable mental state frequently escalates to irrational proportions, with potentially tragic consequences.
Mental health professionals are trained to establish a rapport with distressed and disturbed individuals and to defuse tensions. Together with other members of the STAR team, they can then assist in identifying the individual's psychological and psychiatric needs and direct them to appropriate psychiatric and medical resources.
A defendant I recently evaluated for diversion was arrested and charged with battery and false imprisonment. My evaluation revealed that Michael had a long history of psychiatric hospitalizations for psychotic behavior. His mother told me that he had been "going downhill" about two weeks prior to the incident. When I began my evaluation of Michael, he had been incarcerated for about two months at the local jail, during which time he was psychiatrically medicated.
The provisions afforded by mental health care could, in my opinion, reduce crime and be a cost-effective alternative to the mass incarceration of people who are mentally ill. It might also reduce the incidence of police shootings of people who are mentally ill. The weakness of alternate programs is that there is no systematic and structured place to provide quality psychiatric treatment during the period of time when the defendant is actively monitored by the court and in the process of psychiatric stabilization.
Things to remember
- People with acute mental illness may react illogically when approached by an armed police officer.
- Forcefully asserting police authority when dealing with a potential offender may be counterproductive with someone who is mentally ill.
- Mental health professionals are trained to establish a rapport with distressed and disturbed individuals and to defuse tensions.
What are your thoughts on the article?
#ForensicPsychology #Psychopathology #CriminalBehavior
@calmDew1576
It’s great that the early results are promising!
I agree, that the standard approaches some officers use when dealing with mental health individuals is not necessary, and can be dangerous.
I think this is an amazing program!💛💫
@innateJoy9602 That's so true. I believe the presence of a mental health specialist is necessary for the criminal justice system to work properly. Thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts!
@calmDew1576
This sounds promising although I have mixed feelings about it! I am not sure whether it would be safe for mental health professionals - It seems to me that their training is not enough for that. Both of these professionals have their own training so perhaps complementary training could be also beneficial.
@globalBraid3744 I see your point. That's why it's crucial to collaborate and work together with other specialists in all professions but especially in clinical and/or forensic settings! I believe it is doable since there are many specializations for mental health specialists who want to work in forensic settings apart from the training they already receive. In any case they should always work alongside with justice system specialists. Their knowledge on what could lead someone to commit a crime or if there was motivation though could definitely be used in criminal justice. Thank you for reading!
@calmDew1576
This is true! I believe that multidisciplinary collaboration is always helpful. There definitely are many great forensic psychologists who would welcome this kind of job but I agree it would be probably better to always work alongside justice system specialists. They would make such a great team!
@calmDew1576
Police also get training to deal with mentally ill subjects/suspects. I think a better way to state the difference is that the police officer's primary motivation is to protect the greater community. While a mental health professional is to care for the single person's interests. Taking a mentally ill subject to jail often serves the community while its usually NOT the right thing for the subject.
Also, having a separate, uniformed person who reaches out may diffuse conflict simply because there isn't the pretense in the subject that s/he could go to jail, even if the police officer had no intention of doing so. Stated differently: even a less-skilled mental health technician would likely have a better chance at gaining rapport with a subject than a police officer with even better psychological training, simply because the technician wears a different "label".
That all sounds great but I have to wonder just how reflective of success the data is up to this point. If I got shanked because someone went off his meds & was having a psychotic episode, my first thought probably wouldn't be "we need a psychiatrist, stat!" while I'm bleeding out on the street... Also, I hope that such mental health professionals have basic defense skills. Sure, they may not approach a suspect as a police officer would & so might not seem nearly as threatening. That does not mean they are not at risk of being injured or killed. Even the most innocuous soft-spoken person can look monstrous to someone in the grip of delusions.