Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Criminal Justice, 2009Owing to the closure of state mental hospitals and limited funding for mental health programs, police increasingly must respond to calls involving persons in mental health crisis. Unfortunately, police officers often do not have the skills or the resources to respond effectively. As a result, many mentally ill persons are arrested and subsequently incarcerated leading to an endemic problem of jails and prisons acting as "the new asylums." In many communities, police and mental health service providers have joined forces to address this problem. One response, which first emerged in Memphis, Tennessee, is Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training for police officers. Programs modeled on the Memphis CIT training have been adopted across the United States. Indeed, several states are currently considering mandating that all state and local police agencies provide CIT training to their officers. As the program has spread, however, police agencies have adapted the Memphis Model in different ways. As a result, there is no national model or standard for what constitutes CIT training. In particular, there are questions about what the role of mental health advocates should be in designing the CIT training, whether all police officers in a department or only volunteers should receive CIT training, and how the training can be adapted for cities of different size. Moreover, little is known about whether CIT training actually improves police officers' responses to persons in mental health crisis. Building on two pilot studies this research combines qualitative and quantitative data to address these questions of content and effectiveness. This study examines the larger community context of one CIT program through interviews and focus groups with police officers, medical personnel and community members. In addition, this study utilizes data from officer-completed incident response sheets to examine the effects of CIT training. Specifically, the study addresses (1) whether CIT training affects how frequently officers report persons as having a mental illness, (2) how officers respond to and resolve incidents involving persons whom they believe to be in mental health crisis, and (3) whether there are differences in responses between CIT and non-CIT trained officers.