Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The criminalization of mental illness has drawn and kept a disproportionate
number of people living with mental illness in jails and prisons across the United States.
The criminal legal system is ill-equipped or unequipped to provide meaningful mental
health care. Police often serve as gatekeepers to the criminal legal system in the midst of
encounters involving people living with serious mental illness. The literature that
examines police decision-making amid these highly discretionary encounters has been
primarily situated in post-positivist, quantitative methodologies focused on police
perspectives. There is a dearth of research with the direct involvement of people living
with serious mental illness that employs more advanced qualitative methodologies.
The purpose of this study was to understand the lived experience of police
encounters from the perspective of people living with serious mental illness through
multi-level analysis of the interpersonal and structural contexts which underpin these
encounters. This critical phenomenological study used interpretative phenomenological
analysis as process. A sample of 16 adults were recruited using purposive and snowball
sampling and completed semi-structured interviews. The findings reported two
descriptive areas for participants—aspects of serious mental illness and contemplations of
power. The findings also included the interpretive analysis organized around six themes
that emerged regarding the lived experience of police encounters: (a) significant context,
to include serious mental illness, was made invisible, (b) the carceral response to serious
mental illness and interpersonal issues, (c) law enforcement’s power to force submission, (d) facets of escalation, (e) law enforcement encounters lacked essential care, and (f) law
enforcement encounters served as a microcosm of the criminal legal system.
The implications of the study’s findings on police encounters as they are currently
framed in the largely post-positivist, quantitative body of research are discussed. In
addition, the current wave of national police response models and reform are considered
and connected to implications for social work practice. Finally, culminating in the
findings’ implications for a growing edge of critical phenomenology that incorporates
intersectionality and disciplinary power and the central role of an abolition feminist
praxis at the nexus of mental health, crisis response, and collective care.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:IUPUI/oai:scholarworks.iupui.edu:1805/27275 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Quiring, Stephanie Q. |
| Contributors | Kim, Hea-Won, Starnino, Vincent, Sullivan, Patrick, Kennedy, Sheila |
| Source Sets | Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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