Practice Profile: Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs)

This practice comprises specialized police-led, pre-booking jail diversion responses to individuals with mental illness. The goals are to reduce police officers’ injuries and use of force, and to reduce arrests of individuals with mental illness. The practice is rated Ineffective for reducing arrests of individuals with mental illness and reducing trained police officers’ use of force in situations involving mentally ill individuals.

Practice Goals

Crisis intervention teams (CITs) use specialized police-led, pre-booking responses to divert individuals with mental illness. CITs consist of police officers who have undergone training in identifying and addressing serious mental illness. CITs are designed to reduce stigmatization around mental illness, and direct individuals with mental illness to needed treatment programs and away from arrest. The goals are to reduce police officers’ injuries, reduce arrests of individuals with mental illness, minimize officers’ use of force, and increase mentally ill individuals’ diversion from the criminal justice system and their access to mental health services.

Practice Components

The original CIT model (called the Memphis Model) was developed by the Memphis Police Department in 1988 to shift police roles and organizational priorities to a service-oriented model that responds to mental illness as a community safety and public health concern (Watson et al. 2010). As both law enforcers and community resources, police officers are trained to 1) recognize signs and symptoms of mental illness, 2) de-escalate situations using crisis-response techniques, and 3) develop partnerships with mental health service providers and leverage community resources. CIT police officers are taught about mental illness and trained to handle crises, so they can divert individuals away from the criminal justice system to responsive mental health services.

Topics covered by training may include risk assessment/intervention, child and adolescent disorders, geriatric disorders, legal issues, and departmental procedures. Role-play exercises may also be part of the training, so police officers can practice their learned skills (Watson et al. 2010). Trainings are usually 40 hours long and conducted by police trainers, local mental health professionals, family advocates, and consumer groups (Compton et al. 2014).

The studies included in the Taheri (2016) meta-analysis provided insufficient information to estimate the effects of the practice on police officer injuries.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile: