Measuring disparities in police use of force and injury among persons with serious mental illness.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To measure disparities in experience of police use of force and injury among persons with serious mental illnesses.

Methods

We gathered novel police use of force and suspect injury data from 2011 to 2017 from a nonrandom sample of nine police departments in the United States and used synthetic methods to estimate the share of the local population with serious mental illness. We estimate disparities using multi-level models estimated in a Bayesian framework.

Results

Persons with serious mental illness constitute 17.0% of use of force cases (SD = 5.8) and 20.2% of suspects injured in police interaction (SD = 9.0) in sample cities. The risk that persons with serious mental illness will experience police use of force is 11.6 times higher (95% CI, 10.7-12.6) tha

SUBMITTER: Laniyonu A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8513301 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature