
The Chief Constable has recognised the impact of mental health demand on policing and made reducing that demand a priority. Last week I met with Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton and we discussed the fact that calls to the police relating to mental health crises rose from just under 400 a day in 2018 to an average of 666 per day in the first quarter of 2024. I was encouraged by the work underway to reverse that trend.
Meanwhile the number of enforcements for road traffic offences are at the lowest level since Police Scotland started. Violent crime is going up. Stop searches are going down. All the time that we’re dealing with mental health crises, which substantively isn’t our work, is time that should be spent on core policing roles. These are coming adrift because we’re spending so much time papering over the cracks of the NHS and Health and Social Care partnership service provision.
The Scottish Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee met on the 8th January to discuss policing and vulnerable people within the community. The committee discussed the response of Police Scotland and what action is being taken in partnership to address these challenges. The lack of 24/7 provision in other services was highlighted by ACC Paton.
I also sent a letter of evidence to the committee, in which I said that there was a ‘mission creep’ from core policing; the demand of dealing with people in mental health crisis now weighs upon police resources to such an extent that performance in other areas is suffering badly.
I believe that people suffering from mental health issues should face no stigma and should receive the appropriate treatment and support. Police involvement with people suffering mental health issues should be the same as their involvement with any other member of the public: in emergency situations where there is an immediate threat to the safety of the public or individuals, or if they are the victim or perpetrator of crime.
I know that Police Scotland wants to improve the situation, but I’m slightly more skeptical that Scottish Government will make it happen, as Police Scotland have given an open-ended commitment not to withdraw in any way until alternative models of delivery are found. Is the will (and the funding) really there to shift this burden back to the services best placed to deal with it? Time will tell.
Scottish Government published a Framework for Collaboration, but I don’t think it goes far enough. One of the solutions mentioned was alternative safe spaces where people can be brought but, frankly, they’ve been talking about that since I joined the police and people still too often l end up at Hospital Emergency Departments or police cells. Real progress toward this needs to be made this year, on a scale that actually makes a difference to the problem, as opposed to a samll pilot dealing with penny-numbers.
If we’re really going to see change, there needs to be real commitment across the partnership and there needs to be accountability. While forces in England and Wales have committed to ‘Right Care, Right Person’, in Scotland we have not. My fear is that, without an end-date or plan to extricate police officers from these roles, there is insufficient incentive for other services to step forward, into the gap in service provision and deal with the work that should rightfully sit with them.
There are 14 separate health boards in Scotland and a patch-work quilt of initiatives in local areas, some really good, but how do we ensure national roll-out? Those decisions need scrutiny. It can’t be the police’s job to figure out all the answers to these questions.