Investigating Police Response to Mental Health Incidents in Boston Public Schools

• In Event: Staff and Systems Involved in Supporting Student Mental Health

Abstract

Introduction: Studies consistently find that one-half to two-thirds of youth in the U.S. with emotional/behavioral disorders do not receive mental health services (Costello et al., 2014; Merikangas et al., 2011); in particular, students of color have low rates of service use compared to their non-Latino White peers (Guo, Kataoka, Bear, & Lau, 2014; Kataoka, Zhang, & Wells, 2002; Merikangas et al., 2011). When schools lack adequate numbers of mental health staff (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014), they may call on police during mental health crises. Yet police involvement has been associated with low rates of mental health service referrals and increased rates of emergency room visits (Evans & Boothroyd, 2002). This project reports on police involvement in the Boston Public Schools (BPS), with a particular emphasis on incidents involving mental health. We consider what officers do in these incidents (i.e. when and how they actively respond). Identifying the most common types of incidents involving police in schools (e.g. physical assault, sexual assault, threat of school violence) can provide information about need for emergency services in schools. This talk will present data and current findings from the coding and analysis of 884 Boston Police Department (BPD) incident reports generated from occurrences at 57 BPS schools over the period of one academic school year.

Methods: Data consisted of redacted narratives pulled from BPD incident reports. Incident reports were coded by three coders. All incident reports were initially double-coded until the coders were coding consistently (with a kappa of > .70), after which point 20% of reports were double-coded. Coders extracted information about the nature and outcome of incidents; the students, staff, officers, and outside resources involved; the use of handcuffs or any restraint during the incident or response; and the adult(s) who first heard of the incident.

Results: As of the date of this submission, the first 428 out of the total 884 incident reports have been analyzed. Preliminary analysis of these 428 reports reveal that the most frequently recorded incidents that precipitated police involvement were physical assault (77 incidents; 18.0%), behavioral outburst/emotional dysregulation (59 incidents; 13.8%), and sexual offenses (59 incidents; 13.8%). Among all 428 recorded incidents, 61 (14.3%) were coded as being described in the incident narrative as involving a mental or behavioral health crisis, 89 incidents (20.8%) resulted in a hospital transport, 62 incidents (14.5%) involved an evaluation or psychiatric evaluation specifically, 31 incidents (7.2%) specified criminal complaint(s), and 30 incidents (7.0%) ended in arrest.

Conclusion: Results of this study are designed to provide information about requests from schools for police emergency response to students, and the outcomes of those responses. Particular focus is placed on students experiencing mental and behavioral health crises, with results suggesting ways in which adequate behavioral health staffing and preparation of teachers to address student mental health could potentially reduce the need for police emergency response. This research is ongoing and coding will be completed by April 2021.

Authors

• Emma Lincoln, Boston University

• Natalie Goodman, Boston University

• Jenna Lanciani, Boston University

• Becky Muller, Boston University

• Melissa Morabito, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Jenna Savage, Boston Police Department

• Jill Battal, Boston Public Schools

• Jennifer Greif Green, Boston University