Treatment for mental health and substance use Spillovers to police safety

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We study the effect of community access to mental health and substance use treatment on police officer safety, proxied with on-duty assaults on officers. Police officers often serve as first-responders to people experiencing mental health and substance use crises, which can place police officers at risk. Combining agency-level data on police officer on-duty assaults and county-level data on treatment centers that offer mental health and substance use care, we estimate panel fixed-effects regressions. An additional four centers per county (the average annual increase observed in our data) leads to a 1.3% reduction per police agency in on-duty police officers assaults.

Deza, Monica, Thanh Lu, Johanna Catherine Maclean, and Alberto Ortega. “Behavioral health treatment and police officer safety.” Journal of Human Resources (2025).