Reconciling mental health, public policing and police accountability
| Author | John LM McDaniel |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X18766372 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Reconciling mental health,
public policing and police
accountability
John LM McDaniel
University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
Abstract
The paper evaluates a range of policy documents, parliamentary debates, academic
reports and statutes in an attempt to contextualise the condition of mental health
policing in England and Wales. It establishes that mental health care plays an important
role in public policing and argues that police organisations need to institute urgent
reforms to correct a prevailing culture of complacency. An unethical cultural attitude
towards mental health care has caused decision-making and the exercise of police
discretion to be neither well informed nor protective in many cases, resulting in
the substandard treatment of people with mental health problems. The paper argues that
changes introduced by the Policing and Crime Act 2017 and the revised College of
Policing mental health guidelines do not go far enough and that more extensive root-and-
branch reforms are needed.
Keywords
Mental health, police accountability, police reform
Introduction
Sir Ian Blair, the former Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, evoked a
sense of moral panic when he argued that the duty of the police ‘to protect the commu-
nity from crime and terror is being jeopardised by the time they spend on people in crisis’
(Blair, 2016). Local authority and central governm ent rationing of funds for mental
health services were responsible for leaving the police ‘to pick up the pieces of Britain’s
mental health cuts’, in his opinion (Blair, 2016). Numerous other articles and reports
depict similar images of a haphazard, disjointed, fragmented, unpredictable, dysfunc-
tional and deteriorating approach to mental health provision, which they attribute by and
Corresponding author:
John LM McDaniel, University of Wolverhampton, Nursery Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1 AD, UK.
Email: J.McDaniel@wlv.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2019, Vol. 92(1) 72–94
ªThe Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X18766372
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large to significant funding cuts and staff shortages across the health services (Campbell,
2016; Dodd, 2016; HAC, 2015; HMIC, 2015; IPCC, 2016; Quinn et al., 2016). This
article draws upon a range of policy documents, parliamentary debates, academic texts
and statutes to argue that the present condition of mental health provision has been
caused not only by funding cuts and inadequate inter-agency working but by a persistent
and deep-rooted degree of confusion and uncertainty which surrounds the provision of
mental health care as a function of public policing. It establishes that mental health care
plays an important role in public policing and argues that police officers and the wider
policing organisation need to reverse a prevailing culture of complacency by taking more
‘operational responsibility’ for mental health-related encounters.
Mental health as core police business
As a point of departure, it is important to establish that it is a normal occurrence for
police officers to encounter individuals who are experiencing mental disorders on a day-
to-day basis. Police officers are often the first public service to reach someone who is
experiencing a mental health crisis (IPCC, 2016). Bittner’s (1990: 251) famous aphorism
that it is the ‘unique competence’ of the police to intervene in events which can be
characterised as ‘something-that-ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-which-some-
one-had-better-do-something-now’ was premised, in part, on his observation that ‘the
official mandate of the police includes provisions for dealing with mentally ill persons’.
This official mandate ‘ ...is not limited to persons who for reasons of illness fail to
observe the law. Rather, in suitable circumstances the signs of mental illness or a
competent allegation of mental illness are in themselves the proper business of the police
and can lead to authorised intervention’ (Bittner, 1967a: 278). This distinct ‘social
services’ nature of police work encouraged early academic commentators to label police
officers as ‘peace officers’, ‘peace keepers’ and ‘streetcorner politicians’, rather than the
more idealised ‘crime control’ and ‘law enforcer’ characterisations that were often
associated with policing (Banton, 1964: 7; Bittner, 1967b: 699; Muir, 1977: 62).
The lineage of these social tasks can be traced back to the duties of early 19th-century
constables who routinely administered first aid at accidents and even drove ambulances,
amongst other duties (Emsley, 1996; Punch and James, 2017). Encounters which could
be considered bizarre or abnormal, where anxiety, fear, confusion or disorientation was
the primary concern, often required police officers to take more innovative approaches
than simple law enforcement (Jones and Mason, 2002). Murphy et al. (1971) found that
roughly 80%of policing activities in the late 1960s and early 70s were devoted to ‘social
service’ rather than ‘law enforcement’, presenting the police with significant opportu-
nities for mental health-related interventions. Similarly, Punch and Naylor (1973)
observed that most calls for ass istance were not crime-relat ed but were more often
concerned with issues of public health. One sample survey of schizophrenia sufferers,
carried out in the late 1980s, found that the police were the most highly-rated service
when it came to caring for the mentally ill within the community – rated more highly
than doctors, psychiatrists and social workers (Smith, 1990: 1117).
An upward trend in the number of encounters between the police and individuals who
are experiencing mental health problems has been attributed to the government’s policy
McDaniel 73
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