NCJ Number
96299
Date Published
1984
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the ways in which the police interpret citizens' calls about the mentally ill and, by inference, how calls about other noncriminal matters are interpreted.
Abstract
The study considered how organization affected the processing of calls involving the mentally ill by two police communications systems -- the 'British Police Department' (BPD) in the United Kingdom and the Midwest Police Department' (MPD) in the United States. Cases of message handling in the BDP and the MPD are presented in narrative format, followed by discussion of the role of assumptions in the processing of cases known after the fact or at the time to involve the mentally ill. The two organizations differed in the patterning or social organization of responses to citizens' calls. The calls provided material for six tentative generalizations about the effects of classification in the two systems on the police handling of the mentally ill: the degree of control varies, the framing of calls varies, classification effects vary, formal priorities vary, the incidents are interpreted differently within each of the subsystems of the two organizations, and the role of assumptions varies in the two systems. Interpretative aspects of message processing are somewhat independent of the informational aspects, and both must be considered to account for the transformation of messages in a communication system. Sixteen notes and 32 references are provided.