In this light, calculating the scale of calls-for-service entailing engagement with PMIH has become a priority in evidence-based policing research and practice. Comparable concerns to those in England and Wales have been raised in the USA ( National Council of State Governments, 2002) and the Netherlands ( O’Hagan and Quinn, 2018). In short, police forces perceive that they lack the resources (both capacity and capability) required to address the demand associated with PMIH. In these terms, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in England and Wales has expressed concern over the extent to which PMIH-related demand is ‘placing an intolerable burden on police officers and staff’ (HMIC, 2018, p. In recent years, however, the scale and nature of policing engagement with PMIH are perceived to have grown and widened substantially, understood as an unavoidable consequence of the design and funding of social policies and of policing models ( Livingston, 2016). A study in the early 1970s, for example, found that 40% of the patients voluntarily admitted to hospital for mental ill-health issues in the USA were brought to the institution by the police ( Gilboy and Schmidt, 1971). This role has been recognized for some time. Engagement with PMIH can also occur irrespective of whether a crime has taken place, with the police seen as a safety net in the absence of appropriate community support networks, acting to refer PMIH to public health services. Such contact can be habitual and generate sub-optimal outcomes, with PMIH trapped in a continuous cycle of police custody, prison, emergency hospital care, and life on the streets ( Akins et al., 2016 ). Yet, a disproportionately large number of arrestees and victims suffer from mental ill-health ( Teplin et al., 2005 White et al., 2006). Given that approximately one-quarter of people in the UK experience a mental health problem each year (Mind, 2020) and that one in six adults have a Common Mental Disorder ( McManus et al., 2016), it is to be expected that PMIH will come in to contact with the police. Addressing this shortfall serves as the motivation for this article. To date, however, there has been a limited endeavour to account for the extent to which incidents involving PMIH inform the scale of these policing demands and the resources committed in their address. Argued to be a consequence of the austerity agenda, which has resulted in a substantive reduction in the non-policing public services provided by the state ( Crawford et al., 2018), the police have become positioned a ‘service of first resort, rather than last’ for dealing with vulnerable people (Winsor, quoted in HMICFRS, 2018). In addition to crime and anti-social behaviour, and increasingly, calls-for-service to the police relate to concerns about public safety and welfare ( College of Policing, 2015 Boulton et al., 2017 Charman, 2018 Wuschke et al., 2018). This has been associated, at least in part, with both a growth and shift in the nature of the demands being placed on police forces. The amount of time spent dealing with PMIH-related incidents is both substantial and disproportionate relative to other forms of police demand.Įngaging with persons with mental ill-health (PMIH) has become an integral part of, and a significant challenge to, contemporary policing. Findings suggest that existing police recording practices serve to significantly underestimate the scale and severity of PMIH-related demand. Furthermore, and using Global Positioning System data, we then assess the amount of time spent by frontline officers responding to these calls. ![]() To address this shortfall, we deploy a bespoke text mining algorithm on police incident logs to estimate the proportion and severity of calls-for-service involving PMIH in a study of Greater Manchester, UK. ![]() Yet, little is known of the scale and severity of such PMIH-related policing demand, nor of the extent of frontline resource consumed in resolving such incidents. Addressing public safety and welfare, inclusive of responding to incidents involving persons with mental ill-health (PMIH) has become an integral dimension of, and a significant challenge to, contemporary policing.
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