Why Defunding the Police in Favor of Traditional Mental Health Systems Is Not the Answer to Police Brutality

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Whether in recent discussions around defunding the police or in long-standing decarceration efforts, progressive calls to action often point to a popular answer: shifting funding to a mental health system that is itself often a source of significant suffering. People with mental health labels or with intellectual or developmental disabilities—especially people of color—are at far greater risk of attracting unwanted attention from law enforcement. This results in deaths as a result of police encounters (in the United States, people with disabilities account for up to 50 percent of deaths at the hands of police) and over-incarceration in the criminal justice system, as well as forced institutionalization in psychiatric institutions.

At the same time, the idea that “people need treatment, not the police” ignores the fact that traditional mental health systems, focusing heavily on institutionalization and on a disease model, operate in similar ways to jails and prisons in most parts of the world, with state sanctioned power to deprive people of liberty. Just as in the criminal justice system, existing mental health systems are rooted in social control and in racism. Black people are at least three times more likely than average to be admitted into psychiatric inpatient care, and are more likely to be admitted involuntarily and to stay the longest. 

This conversation features perspectives from the disability justice and mad movements about what is actually needed to promote well-being and safety for everyone in our communities.