Policing emotionally disturbed persons. Ethnographic perspectives on interactional and organizational categorizations in Swiss security police

Police encounters with people who are emotionally disturbed, experiencing some form of mental health crisis or exhibiting symptoms of mental illness are an important, sensitive and demanding aspect of contemporary police work. Overall, current research indicates that police interactions with persons with mental health problems are tending to increase and that a significant proportion of police work is concerned with welfare incidents and the treatment of vulnerable persons. In crisis situations with emotionally disturbed persons (EDP), police officers are often the first responders, in order to involve psychiatric, medical or social work services in a further step. As a result, they are also assigned the role of a «de facto mental health provider», likely to adopt a «social service approach». With regard to the perception and management of EDP in everyday police work, the state of research provides an ambivalent and unclear picture. On the one hand, there are de-escalated and softer forms of police encounters with EDP, and on the other hand, an authoritarian and repressive use of force, which is accompanied by tendencies to criminalize EDP. Despite the great importance attached to EDP in the police context and the increasing number of international academic studies, we still know little about how police encounters with EDP unfold in situ and how police officers perceive, categorize and assess such encounters in their daily routine work. This research gap is particularly evident with respect to Switzerland, where sociological police research is very sparse.

This project aims to capture and reconstruct the social practices and organizational processes in the field of security policing, with which EDP related issues or mental illnesses are marked, processed and made significant for the further course of everyday police work. The project is designed as an organizational ethnography, informed by ethnomethodology, according to which attributions or distinctions are always situationally produced, charged with meaning and adapted to the police work context. Our attention is therefore focused on the connection between the production of EDP- and mental illness related categorizations and police work processes, which we understand in terms of their reciprocal relationship. Of particular interest here is how other police field-specific differentiations such as criminal, legal, or territorial assignments interfere with EDP related categorizations. Accordingly, the research addresses two levels of organizational activity: On the one hand, categorization practices in interaction situations, especially between police personnel and the EDPs as well as with other professionals and actors (emergency psychiatrists, hospital staff, social workers; but also relatives, neighbors, etc.). On the other hand, the emphasis is on organizational events beyond a direct interaction with addressees: administrative and organizing routines such as intervention planning, log and journal entries, or working arrangements with other organizations (hospital, psychiatric facilities, social work services etc.).

This 42-month comparative organizational ethnography comprises four case studies in different Swiss cantons. In addition to participant observation, four other methodical approaches will be used: semi-standardized expert interviews, ethnographic interviews, document analysis, and focus group discussions. In order to obtain a greater variance of police contexts for the necessary contrasts, we will further contextualize the results of the ethnographic case studies through experts' interviews that will conducted in another 8 to 12 police organizations in different Swiss cantons. The main relevance of the research is to fill the research gap on mental health policing in Switzerland. Our findings on categorization practices in police-EDP encounters will contribute to the state of international research.

• Skuza Krzysztof Michal, Professeur associé, HESAV
• Pineiro Esteban,  FHNW

• FHNW Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz