(June 28, 2017) While public attention has focused on other issues involved in fatal law enforcement encounters, the Treatment Advocacy Center’s Office of Research & Public Affairs (ORPA) has focused on the role played by untreated serious mental illness in these encounters.
ORPA’s study, Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters, found the risk of being killed while being approached or stopped by law enforcement in the community to be 16 times higher for individuals with untreated serious mental illness than for other civilians.
In the two years since this study has been released, Overlooked in the Undercounted and other ORPA reports have been featured in numerous publications and have sparked changes in data collection. The 21st Century Cures Act included a mandate recommended in Overlooked in the Undercounted for the US attorney general to collect and report data on the role of serious mental illness in fatal law enforcement encounters.
In addition, the Bureau of Justice Statistics overhauled its system for collecting law enforcement homicide data. Their new approach approximately doubled the number of arrest-related deaths that were verified and reported by the Department of Justice.
The role of mental illness in them has not yet been reported by the federal government. However, given the risk of death during an encounter, reducing the likelihood of police interaction with those in psychiatric crisis may be the most important strategy to reducing fatal law enforcement encounters.