SSSP 2024 Annual Meeting
Date: Friday, August 9
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
THEMATIC
Session 023: Alternatives to Policing
Room: Hemon
Sponsors: Community, Research, and Practice
Drinking and Drugs
Health, Health Policy, and Health Services
Organizers: Keisha M. Muia, Portland State University
Paul J. Draus, University of Michigan-Dearborn
Presider &
Discussant: Keisha M. Muia, Portland State University
Description: This session explores alternatives to policing currently taking place in the United States. Alternatives to policing includes any service in which behavioral health crises and public safety needs are addressed by trained community safety specialists rather than police. This may also include incorporating human services programs as opposed to exercising punitive practices. Using police as the primary tool to address health and social issues such as mental illness, substance use, homelessness, and community violence has contributed to mass incarceration. This in turn causes individual as well as communal harm and incurs substantial costs. Investing in other programs and services would reduce costs and address the harms that are tied to the current model of responding to public safety concerns.
Papers:
“‘But Do They Have Their Rights?’ Informal Kinship Care, Custody Loss, and, Substance Use among Latinas in a Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Community,” Esmeralda Ramirez, University of Southern California, Jessica Frankeberger, University of California, San Diego, Alice Cepeda and Avelardo Valdez, University of Southern California
“Alternatives to Policing: What it is and Why it Matters,” Keisha M. Muia, Portland State University
“Examining Experiences of Non-police Responses to Mental Health Crisis,” Jenny K. Leigh, New York University
“What Happened after the Crisis? Comparing Post-year Arrest Outcomes between Law Enforcement and Clinical Service Responses,” Catherine Zettner and Kaitlyn Kok, Wayne State University Center for Behavioral Health and Justice and Juliette Roddy, Northern Arizona University