Research Colloquium - Behavioral Health Treatment and Police Officer Safety
Time
Tuesday, 16. April 2024
15:15 - 16:45
Location
F425
Organizer
Junior Professorship Fernández-Guerrico
Speaker:
Catherine Maclean (George Mason University)
Behavioral Health Treatment and Police Officer Safety
(Monica Deza, Thanh Lu, Johanna Catherine Maclean, Alberto Ortega)
Abstract: We study the effect of community access to behavioral health (mental health and substance use disorders) treatment on police officer safety, which we proxy with on-duty assaults on officers. Combining agency-level data on police officer on-duty assaults and county-level data on the number of treatment centers within the community that offer behavioral health treatment, we estimate two-way fixed-effects regressions and find that that an additional four centers per county (average increase) leads to a 1.3% reduction per police agency in on-duty assaults against police officers. Previously established benefits of access to treatment on behavioral health extend to the work environment of police officers.