Policing and public health: Exploring new ways to unlock the social cure

Police activity is disproportionately directed towards people on the margins of society. While many groups of people are likely to become the objects of police attention, the focus of this research will be on people with poor mental health who interact with police, as victims, witnesses, and offenders. On current estimates there has been a rise in mental-health related demand in recent years, and police now spend up to 40% of their time dealing, in some way, with people with mental health problems. Police are often the 'service of last resort', and have always been involved with people in various forms of mental health crisis. More broadly, the links between poverty, ill-health and crime mean that those who interact with officers - for whatever reason - are disproportionately likely to suffer from a wide range of mental (and physical) conditions. But austerity-driven cuts to health and other services have in many cases left police as a service of first resort, the only agency available to respond to calls for help from people in distress. Yet, little is known about whether police activity exacerbates or alleviates the mental health problems faced by the people that officers encounter. Moreover, how police activity affects the social and geographic spread of mental health problems has barely been considered.

Little is known about how police encounters influence well-being, particularly in the UK. This project will address this important gap in current understanding of police-public interactions by investigating the ways that policing can affect people's mental health. Drawing upon the social identity approach to health, theories of intergroup relations, and procedural justice theory (PJT), the three objectives of the research are (a) to investigate whether and why police activity is higher in areas where people face more mental health problems; (b) to work with client groups and the police to find out how the police respond to people's various mental health presentations and what the journey thereafter looks like; and (c) to feed into the design of an intervention that will focus on helping the police manage the interactions they have with people experiencing mental health problems and help them to reduce re-offending amongst this group. Ultimately, the end goal of the project is to mitigate harmful consequences of policing for - and by doing so, improve the mental well-being of - people who have high levels of contact with police.

The proposed project will take a multi-methods approach and involve both quantitative and qualitative strands of work, packaged into three work programs reflecting the three project objectives. By undertaking these WPs, the project will advance theoretical understanding of the processes through which police encounters influence well-being among those with poor mental health and 'difficult to reach' groups; theoretical knowledge that will provide applied benefit for a range of different stakeholders including the College of Policing, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS; and other police forces in the UK and overseas), the Mayor's Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC), and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).