A Community-Response Approach to Mental-Health and Substance-Abuse Crises Reduced Crime

Thomas Dee and Jaymes Pyne

No zsaf5, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Police officers often serve as first responders to mental-health and substance-abuse crises. Concerns over the unintended consequences and high costs associated with this approach have motivated new emergency-response models that augment or completely remove police involvement. However, there is little causal evidence evaluating these programs. This pre-registered study presents quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of an innovative “community response” pilot in Denver that directed targeted emergency calls to health-care responders instead of the police. We find robust evidence that the program reduced targeted, less serious crimes (e.g., trespassing, public disorder, resisting arrest) by 34 percent. We also find that this community-response approach has substantially lower costs relative to engaging such crises through the criminal-justice system.

Date: 2021-03-14
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:zsaf5

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/zsaf5

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