Defunding the Police is Good for our Mental Health

Bird, Holly; Bryant, Lucy and Kadiri, Habib (2024). Defunding the Police is Good for our Mental Health. The Political Quarterly, 95(3) pp. 474–479.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13449

Abstract

In May 2023, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley announced the withdrawal of his officers from attending mental health emergencies, under the new policy Right Care, Right Person (RCRP). In some sense, the move highlights that the police role and remit is not a settled, immovable social fact, and as such, this development, in some limited sense, lends support to the ‘defund the police’ argument. However, defunding done properly requires more than simply withdrawing personnel from a procedural response to an emergency. The article argues that this potentially transformative moment must be capitalised on through an holistic approach to harm prevention—one which seriously demotes police involvement in favour of investment in non-punitive visions of care in order to make for a truly safer society.

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