FEATURE: While law enforcement agencies around the world look at co-responder models and health partnerships to answer the growing demands of those in mental health crisis, new research from the US suggests that teaming up mental health clinicians with police officers to respond to behavioural health-related calls has no better outcome in terms of reducing arrests or improving treatment engagement than simply sending a uniformed officer, as Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons reports.

FEATURE: After its introduction by Humberside Police, the mental health policing approach Right Care, Right Person has been rolled out nationally in England and Wales; but a new announcement from New Zealand Police – a four-phase plan to reduce mental health demand on frontline officers and encourage health partners to take more of a lead – suggests it’s changing international practice too, as Policing Insight’s James Sweetland reports.

INNOVATION: With the police response to those in mental health crisis coming increasingly under focus, Brunel University’s Amy Everitt, and Dr Cody Porter and Dr Paul Gavin from UWE Bristol, highlight the key elements of a new multi-agency training approach held at Brunel University earlier this year, providing real-world immersive scenarios as well as expert insight for frontline emergency responders.

ANALYSIS: New research by Deakin University PhD Candidate Jess Woolley has highlighted how some perpetrators of family violence are weaponising suicide threats, leading to concerns among police officers that addressing the mental health of the perpetrator as a priority can subsequently leave victim-survivors at risk and without adequate protection.

LONG READ: The response to those in mental health crisis has been a major concern for many in policing, with the growing view that uniformed officers are not the most appropriate to deploy to many mental health-related calls; as UK policing continues to adopt the Right Care, Right Person approach, Policing Insight’s Sarah Gibbons takes a closer look at efforts by police forces in Australia and New Zealand to address the challenge.

LONG READ: As policing globally faces significant challenges around effective responses to those in mental health crises, Western Australia Sgt Glen Blackwell, the force’s first Mental Health Co-Response Trainer, received a Churchill Fellowship award to establish diversionary practices for mentally and intellectually disabled persons engaging police; this long-read article, based on his final report to the Churchill Trust, explores international best practice, and makes recommendations for police in Australia that could also benefit other forces.

ANALYSIS: There has been a lot of sympathy for the concerns voiced by policing the UK that officers are often not the right people to respond to those in mental health crisis, and plenty of support for the Right Care, Right Person approach; but Dr Meron Wondemaghen, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull, fears that trying to push through such significant change by a 31 August deadline will leave the health sector unable to cope, and those in crisis lacking the support they need.

OPINION: With the recent announcement by the Met Police that they will only attend mental health 999 calls where there is an “immediate threat to life”, the issue of the emergency service response to those in mental health crisis in the UK is once again under the spotlight; former Police Scotland superintendent Martin Gallagher looks at the history of ‘care in the community’, and argues that it should be mental health professionals – not police – who take the lead role in that response.

FEATURE: A new review by the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody has called for closer partnerships between policing, health and other criminal justice agencies to address mental health issues and help to prevent deaths in custody as well as suicides after release from police custody, as Policing Insight Contributing Editor Sarah Gibbons reports.

INTERVIEW: As police forces around the world struggle to meet the growing demand of emergency calls related to people’s mental health problems, Austin Police Department in Texas has introduced a clinician-based ‘mental health crisis’ option for 911 callers which has improved the service to the public, cut use of force and arrest rates, and enabled officers to prioritise the response to crime, as Policing Insight’s Christine Townsend reports.

FEATURE: Improving mental health and wellbeing for police, as well as the response to those in mental health crisis, is a key concern for law enforcement globally; Jacqueline Durand, Acting Director (Strategy) at the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA), looks at what is being done in both countries to support officers, as well as efforts to respond collaboratively with paramedics and mental health to those community members in crisis.

ANALYSIS: A number of forces across the UK have introduced embedded mental health professionals to improve and support the police response to those in crisis, and perceptions of such initiatives have been positive; now a new study by the N8 Policing Research Partnership has formally evaluated the West Yorkshire Police project, with impressive results, as Policing Insight Editor Keith Potter reports.

OPINION: Levels of violent crime across America saw an unprecedented increase in 2020; in this latest essay from the Violence Reduction Project, Nick Selby, former Director of Cyber Intelligence and Investigations for NYPD, sets out why funding mental health teams staffed by clinicians and cops would be a smarter way to reduce violence and deaths.