The birth of an organisational field: the institutionalisation of civilian crisis response services in the de-tasking era

ABSTRACT

Civilian-led, non-police crisis response services – which attend mental health crises that previously had received uniformed police response in many jurisdictions – have multiplied substantially alongside widespread calls for ‘de-tasking’ of police. Yet, these services inevitably engage in forms of ‘policing’ in both practical and sociological terms, if we understand policing to involve reducing harms and maintaining order under the shadow of police (state coercive) power. Seeing the rapid expansion of these services as the birth of a new organisational field, following organisational and institutional theories, this paper delineates possible futures of these services as they coalesce into increasingly isomorphic forms. The paper then considers the potential bases of legitimacy, organisational ethos and accountability that will develop around these services, and sets out challenges that the organisational field will face if it is to avoid becoming an extension of ‘the police’.

KEYWORDS:

• Organisational theory
• crisis response
• de-tasking
• isomorphism

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr. Jamie Livingston for his comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is not intended to inherently reject other theoretical formulations of policing, for example related to ‘high’ policing functions (Brodeur 1983) or to neglect paradigms that emphasise the investigative, security, and intelligence orientations of modern policing. Rather, this focus on situational response is appropriate here because of the work that civilian-led crisis response services will do, which is much more aligned with ‘low’ policing than ‘high’ policing.

2 It is important to note that the scope of practice for CRT and ACT programs is more limited than the kind of supports offered through CAHOOTS, with CRT and ACT generally focusing on diversion of clients that are being considered for admission to acute psychiatric wards rather than responding to all community-based mental health crises.

3 At least in Anglosphere countries; this claim is well-evidenced in North America and the UK, for example, but is somewhat tenuous in other countries (see e.g. Roché and Oberwittler 2017).

4 CAHOOTS reports that, in 2019, 150 of 24,000 CAHOOTS calls (approximately 0.6%) involved a request for police backup (White Bird Clinic 2020).

5 For example, Banks (2008, p. 1238) highlights the importance of going ‘beyond a focus on professional codes of ethics’ in social work, recognising the limits of codes of ethics as predictors of, or guides to, professional behaviour.