Rs. Engel et E. Silver, Policing mentally disordered suspects: A reexamination of the criminalization hypothesis, CRIMINOLOGY, 39(2), 2001, pp. 225-252
The criminalization hypothesis is based on the assumption that police inapp
ropriately use arrest So resolve encounters with mentally disordered suspec
ts. The current study uses data collected from two large-scale, multi-site
field studies of police behavior-the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POP
N) conducted in 1996-1997 and the Police Services Study (PSS) conducted in
1977-to examine the relationship between suspect mental health and use of a
rrest by police. Multivariate results show that police are not more likely
to arrest mentally disordered suspects. Implications for future research on
the criminalization hypothesis are discussed.