The authors used longitudinal data from a suburban police department to
assess whether increasing numbers of mentally ill individuals are coming to
police attention in a state that has restrictive civil commitment laws. To
test the hypothesis that police would arrest disruptive but nondangerous
individuals to expedite their removal from the community, the authors
studied the outcomes of all incidents involving a mentally ill individual
during a 5-month period. Mental- illness-related incidents coming to police
attention increased 227.6% from 1975 to 1979. Although a 13% arrest rate
was reported for nondangerous incidents, police officers invoked the penal
code only as a last resort.
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