scholarly journals Measuring disparities in police use of force and injury among persons with serious mental illness

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayobami Laniyonu ◽  
Phillip Atiba Goff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Ethnic Disparities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Synthetic Methods ◽  
Police Use Of Force

Abstract Objectives To measure disparities in experience of police use of force and injury among persons with serious mental illnesses. Methods We gathered novel police use of force and suspect injury data from 2011 to 2017 from a nonrandom sample of nine police departments in the United States and used synthetic methods to estimate the share of the local population with serious mental illness. We estimate disparities using multi-level models estimated in a Bayesian framework. Results Persons with serious mental illness constitute 17.0% of use of force cases (SD = 5.8) and 20.2% of suspects injured in police interaction (SD = 9.0) in sample cities. The risk that persons with serious mental illness will experience police use of force is 11.6 times higher (95% CI, 10.7–12.6) than persons without serious mental illness. Persons with serious mental illness are also at a higher risk of experiencing injury, 10.7 times (95% CI, 9.6–11.8), relative to persons without serious mental illness. These relative risk ratios are several times larger than racial and ethnic disparities estimated in the same cities. Conclusion Persons with serious mental are at a significantly elevated risk of experiencing police use of force and injury in police encounters than the general public. The disparities we estimate are several times higher than racial/ethnic disparities in force and injury. Efforts to reform police practices and reimagine public safety in the United States should address significant disparities in police use of force against those with serious mental illness.

Challenging the Ordinality of Police Use-of-Force Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 088740342110383
Author(s):  
Scott M. Mourtgos ◽  
Ian T. Adams ◽  
Samuel R. Baty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Police Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Police Use Of Force ◽  
Lethal Force ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Force Data

Most use-of-force policies utilized by U.S. police agencies make fundamental ordinal assumptions about officers’ force responses to subject resistance. These policies consist of varying levels of force and resistance along an ordinally ranked continuum of severity. We empirically tested the ordinal assumptions that are ubiquitous to police use-of-force continua within the United States using 1 year’s use-of-force data from a municipal police department. Applying a quantitative technique known as categorical regression with optimal scaling, we found the assumptions of ordinality within the studied department’s use-of-force continuum (which is similar to many police use-of-force continua within the United States) are not met. Specifying physical force as a “lower” force option than less-lethal tools is associated with increased officer injury and decreased subject injury. Our findings call into question use-of-force continua featuring ordinal rankings for varying categories of less-lethal force.

scholarly journals Police Use of Body-Worn Cameras: Challenges of Visibility, Procedural Justice, and Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 305-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ermus St. Louis ◽  
Alana Saulnier ◽  
Kevin Walby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Community Policing ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Police Use Of Force ◽  
Community Police ◽  
Accountability Mechanism

Recent controversies over police use of force in the United States of America have placed a spotlight on police in Western nations. Concerns that police conduct is racist and procedurally unjust have generated public sentiments that accountability must be externally imposed on police. One such accountability mechanism is body-worn cameras (BWCs). Optimistic accounts of BWCs suggest that the technology will contribute to the improvement of community–police relations. However, BWCs address consequences, not causes, of poor community–police relations. We argue that the evolving visibility of police associated with BWCs is double-edged, and suggest that the adoption of surveillance technologies such as BWCs in the quest to improve community–police relations will fail without a simultaneous commitment to inclusionary policing practices (such as community policing strategies, community and social development, and local democracy). We outline two initiatives that optimize BWCs by promoting these simultaneous commitments.

A brief history of the criminalization of mental illness

CNS Spectrums ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 638-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel A. Dvoskin ◽  
James L. Knoll ◽  
Mollie Silva
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Community Mental Health ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Serious Mental Illnesses

This article traces the history of the way in which mental disorders were viewed and treated, from before the birth of Christ to the present day. Special attention is paid to the process of deinstitutionalization in the United States and the failure to create an adequately robust community mental health system to care for the people who, in a previous era, might have experienced lifelong hospitalization. As a result, far too many people with serious mental illnesses are living in jails and prisons that are ill-suited and unprepared to meet their needs.

scholarly journals Review of the evidence: prevalence of medical conditions in the United States population with serious mental illness

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Janssen ◽  
Emma E. McGinty ◽  
Susan T. Azrin ◽  
Denise Juliano-Bult ◽  
Gail L. Daumit
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Conditions ◽  
United States Population

Prevalence of serious mental illness among parents in the United States: results from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, 2008–2014

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 222-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leyla F. Stambaugh ◽  
Valerie Forman-Hoffman ◽  
Jason Williams ◽  
Michael R. Pemberton ◽  
Heather Ringeisen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
National Survey ◽  
The United States

scholarly journals Adequacy of Treatment for Serious Mental Illness in the United States

2002 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Wang ◽  
Olga Demler ◽  
Ronald C. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
The United States

scholarly journals The Law on Police Use of Force in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1526-1540
Author(s):  
Brandon Garrett ◽  
Christopher Slobogin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deadly Force ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Police Use Of Force ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

AbstractRecent events in the United States have highlighted the fact that American police resort to force, including deadly force, much more often than in many other Western countries. This Article describes how the current regulatory regime may ignore or even facilitate these aggressive police actions. The law governing police use of force in the United States derives in large part from the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. As construed by the United States Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment provides police wide leeway in using deadly force, making custodial arrests, and stopping and frisking individuals. While state and local police departments can develop more restrictive rules, they often do not. Additionally, the remedies for violations of these rules are weak. The predominant remedy is exclusion of evidence, the impact of which falls primarily on the prosecutor and in any event only has a deterrent effect when evidence is sought. Civil and criminal sanctions have been significantly limited by the Supreme Court, particularly through the doctrine of qualified immunity (applied to individual officers) and the policy or custom defense (applied to municipalities). This minimal regulatory regime is one reason police-citizen encounters in the United States so often result in death or serious bodily harm to citizens, in particular those who are Black. The Article ends with a number of reform proposals.

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