SUBMISSION SUMMARY
The National Justice Project and AFR Team put forward a submission to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission’s community survey on Mental Health and Policing Interactions in NSW. The submission provides an overview of the current landscape and broadly addresses the survey questions in four relevant parts.
- Who Should Respond to Mental Health Callouts
- Co-Response and Collaboration Between Police and Health
- Police Training, Resources and Response Capability
- Family and Carer Involvement in Mental Health Responses
The current landscape reveals a disturbing and recurring pattern: people experiencing mental health issues are too often met with a criminalised response. The AFR Position Paper outlines evidence of the harm produced by a police-first response and sets out guiding principles which highlight the need for holistic responses that centre:
- Harm minimisation and de-escalation techniques;
- Culturally informed practices;
- Diversity and peer-to-peer support; and
- Trauma aware care.
These principles are not adequately upheld under a police-first response. The need to address police-led response systems to mental health callouts is urgent and long overdue.
Call to Action
- Alternative first responders are a practical and compassionate way to ensure people are met with care in their time of need.
- Police involvement in mental health callouts can unnecessarily cause death, harm and criminalisation.
- Training has proven inadequate and deficient in producing any real pattern change in police conduct during mental health callouts.
- Where policy shifts have introduced health responders alongside police, there has been little change to the discretionary decision-making power of police. Police discretion is not appropriate in response
to health and social needs.
