A new study by Alberto Ortega, an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, shows that increasing community access to behavioral healthcare significantly improves safety for law enforcement officers. The research, “Treatment for mental health and substance abuse: Spillovers to Police Safety,” was published in the latest issue of The Journal of Human Resources.
As police officers increasingly serve as first responders to individuals experiencing mental health and substance use crises, they often find themselves in situations that require clinical expertise they typically don't have. The study, conducted with colleagues from Syracuse University, George Mason University, and the Research Triangle Institute, demonstrates that when communities invest in treatment infrastructure, the frequency of these dangerous encounters drops.
“When people can't access behavioral health treatment, crises escalate — and police, without specialized clinical training, are often the ones called in. Expanding access interrupts that chain before it starts,” Ortega said. “Our findings suggest that expanding access can reduce the number of dangerous encounters officers may face.”
The researchers analyzed agency-level data on on-duty assaults alongside county-level data on treatment center availability. Ortega and his coauthors used a fixed-effects panel regression to estimate how the number of treatment centers in a county affects public safety outcomes. The findings were clear: An increase of four treatment centers per county leads to a 1.3% reduction in on-duty assaults per police agency.
“Much of my research examines access to behavioral healthcare and the consequences of unmet need,” Ortega said. “Police officers increasingly respond to crises that require specialized training most have not received. We wanted to understand whether expanding access to treatment could reduce the risk of violence by connecting people to care before a police encounter becomes necessary.”
The study emphasizes that behavioral health is not a siloed medical issue but a pillar of broader public safety.
Ortega plans to expand this research to examine how healthcare policies ripple through other areas of the justice system. Future studies will explore how improved access to care affects police use of force, overall crime rates, and the long-term health of community-police relations.