From Asylums to Paddy Wagons: Policing and Community Mental Health Crisis Management

This important text provides an Australian perspective on how police manage mental health and psychosocial crises in the community. It explores the implications of the deinstitutionalisation of mental health services in Australia, which has led to legislative changes expanding police powers. The result is twofold: more people suffer mental health and psychosocial crises without adequate community care, which, in turn, perpetuates police involvement in such crises – sometimes to the detriment of the individual in crisis. This book explores current practices and recommendations that suggest ways forward in providing therapeutic and ethical police responses for vulnerable people in crisis situations.
 
The book offers a straightforward yet comprehensive examination of the topic from an Australian perspective. The author takes an interdisciplinary approach, integrating criminology, psychology, political science, and law, to help readers understand the pressing need for police and political reform in providing ethical community care for individuals in mental health/psychosocial crises. The valuable insights around current policing practices and impacts make important reading for police practitioners, policy makers, academics, students of criminology, policing and law, and interested members of the general public.

• Highlights the interplay between policing, mental illness, and psychosocial crises

• Covers most up-to-date and evidenced-based research

• Offers valuable insights around current policing practices and impacts

• Cowdery, Discretion in Criminal Justice

• Eagle, Johnson & Goodhand, Crime and Mental Health in New South Wales, 4th edition

• Muthu, Mental Health Law: A Practical Guide