Reframing Mental Health Crisis Response: Building Evidence Without Law Enforcement at the Core

Concerns around the overuse of policing to address mental health concerns have fueled growing recognition of the need for alternatives to traditional law enforcement responses to mental health crises. This has given rise to the implementation of interdisciplinary response models, including police-only responses and the widespread adoption of Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training, as well as co-responder models and mobile crisis response. However, the body of research on the effectiveness of these models is still emerging. Researchers and scholars have conventionally centered law enforcement in much of this work, whether aiming to understand how police address crises or comparing non-police or co-response models to police-led responses. Limitations in data availability, standardized language, measurement, and operational definitions-combined with a lack of clarity around partnerships-make it difficult to understand which models are being implemented and how they function across communities. Addressing these limitations may expose an opportunity to shift away from police as the default and to consider possibilities for crisis systems in which mental health support is provided without routine law enforcement involvement.