Priming the Police
• All police officers within England and Wales will be trained to recognise the symptoms of a mental health problem, and they will be given advice as to whom they can refer MDOs too.
• A suite will be created on the perimeter of all police stations that will receive people who are in crisis and need to be seen by a mental health professional.
• Links will be established between the police and other agencies such as housing to hopefully reduce potential reoffending rates amongst MDOs.
Police officers will undergo formal training to be able to recognise the symptoms of a mental health problem and they will also be given awareness of which services they can refer that person too. This training will last approximately a week, and will be incorporated into the training regime that
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Implementation of the policy:
• Monetary Costs
– In the Cleveland area, sectioning someone under a 136 of the Mental Health Act 2007 costs the police £1800 per person. The cost of detaining 511 people in the Cleveland area in 2010/11 was over £700,000 (Fishpool, 2015). The money that will be saved by significantly reducing the number of people detained under S.136 will be used to provide the mental health training to all members of the police force.
– “The cost of recruiting and training a Police Officer is approximately £12,900” (Nottingham Police, 2012). To include mental health training, the costs of training a police officer could increase to £14,700.
– New suites will need to be built. Each suite should cost around £1 million to build and then £350,000 a year to run, including staffing. As these suites will run by mental health nurses, they will receive funding from both the NHS and the police service.
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