NCJ Number
129020
Journal
Law and Policy Volume: 12 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1990) Pages: 137-154
Date Published
1990
Length
18 pages
Annotation
The rise of Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) and the deinstitutionalization of many chronic mental patients make the relationship between police officers and these patients very important. The authors suggest that police officers need to move from a position of exercising penal social control to one of initiating therapeutic social control.
Abstract
However, the tension between the law enforcement and peacekeeping functions of police often make this transition difficult. Interviews with directors of several CMHCs located in New Jersey demonstrated the importance of liaison programs between the centers and local police departments in which police were helped to approach mentally ill people differently from criminal suspects. Police officers became acquainted with the culture of the mentally ill and the community agencies that serve them and learned to ignore the social status of the mentally ill individuals they encountered. By identifying the mental patient as a member of a larger, socially legitimate group, police officers were able to exercise therapeutic social control. Two major obstacles to managing the penal-social transition involve setting the parameters of the therapeutic control role and dealing with procedural laws. Some ways to overcome these obstacles might be to establish educational programs for police focusing on social distance issues, designating formal liaison persons between CMHCs and local police, and increasing the organizational ties of the deinstitutionalized mentally ill. 2 notes and 51 references (Author abstract modified)