Treatment Advocacy Center Statement on Law Enforcement and Severe Mental Illness
During this difficult and unsettling time, cities across the country are discussing the role of law enforcement in our communities.
Treatment Advocacy Center has been at the forefront of efforts to decriminalize mental illness and reduce encounters between law enforcement officers and those who experience mental illness.
Unfortunately, public policy decisions to close needed treatment beds and antiquated treatment laws that disincentivize early treatment have forced law enforcement to become our de facto mental health safety net.
This wastes community resources, overburdens law enforcement and criminalizes what is a medical condition: severe mental illness.
Treatment Advocacy Founder Dr. E. Fuller Torrey observed in 2003 that jails had become our “de facto mental health institutions.” Almost a decade ago, our research found that there were ten times as many people with mental illness in jails and prisons as in state hospitals.
Today, mental illness response and transport represents a fifth of officer time, according to our 2019 national survey of law enforcement departments. But requiring law enforcement to respond to mental health crises increases the risk that such contact will result in tragedy. As our groundbreaking report, Overlooked in the Undercounted, revealed, a person with untreated mental illness is 16 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement.
The tragic outcomes of this policy are currently being felt in communities across the country, including Minneapolis, where nine of the 13 people who died during encounters with police in 2016 either had a history of mental illness or were currently experiencing a mental health crisis.
Solutions to address the urgent need for racial justice in our communities must be found, although those solutions may lie beyond the expertise of the Treatment Advocacy Center.
But we do know what can be done, today, to reduce encounters between law enforcement and those experiencing a mental health crisis and the use of force that all too frequently follows.
Fund a full continuum of treatment options, including inpatient psychiatric beds - Communities must create a system that provides care before someone is in crisis. That means restoring desperately needed beds for inpatient treatment and making them available without requiring someone to first be violent or suicidal.
Embrace non-law enforcement responses to mental health crises - Both law enforcement and mental health experts agree that mental health crises are not a law enforcement matter. Law enforcement can play a supporting role in situations where there is a safety or criminal concern, but communities should provide a medical response to mental health crises whenever possible.
Prioritize data collection - Without data, communities cannot make informed policy decisions. Congress must expand the provisions first passed in the 21st Century Cures Act to establish a transparent federal database of all incidents involving the use of deadly force by law enforcement.
These solutions may not come easily, but they are necessary if we are to finally create a public safety system that addresses the needs of people with severe mental illness in our communities.