Three Things To Read This Week
1. “‘Trauma Recovery Centers’ Are Favored By Law-And-Order Officials And Progressive Activists Alike For One Big Reason: They Work.”
Three-in-four crime victims report that they did not receive mental health services to help them process the trauma that often accompanies crime victimization. And nearly half of survivors who wanted support didn’t know where to look to find it.
[chart displaying results 2022 results from an Alliance For Safety and Justice survey of crime survivors. To see the full report, including more charts like this, click here.]
Meeting this need is why cities and counties across the country are launching Trauma Recovery Centers—“a place where crime survivors and their families can connect to mental health, relocation, job resources and more services that they need to achieve stability after life-altering violence.”
New York City is leading the way. For The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante reports on three new Trauma Recovery Centers launching in New York City, each of which is a place that “allows counselors and case managers to deal with the emergency [that a crime survivor is facing] and whatever practical concerns might arise from it.”
The support that these centers provide extends beyond crisis care to also help crime victims “manage the emotional effects [of crime victimization, including]: anger and turmoil that can result in dangerous acts of recrimination, or anxiety and depression that can spiral toward unemployment and homelessness.”
It is not an accident that New York City is opening multiple trauma recovery centers. Adrienne Adams, Speaker of the New York City Council, has made it her mission to provide support to crime survivors.
In a recent statement celebrating the opening of the Coney Island center, Speaker Adams underscored her vision that “trauma recovery centers should be a pillar of our public safety infrastructure to support underserved crime victims and communities harmed by the trauma of violence inflicted in our neighborhoods.”
Speaker Adams’s commitment stems from the time she spent with crime survivors who are grieving:
“I’ve met the mothers of these people and the grandmothers. I have sat in their homes,’ she said. And what do we do for them? These families want to retaliate. Siblings want to retaliate. [But now] we have some place for folks to go where they can find comfort … These centers are absolutely the answer."
High-quality research in the form of randomized controlled trials demonstrates the effectiveness of these programs. From the NYT:
“In 2006, a randomized trial was conducted to study the effectiveness of the first trauma recovery center, in San Francisco. The research looked at people in hospitals in the aftermath of serious physical injuries resulting from violence. They followed up with patients referred to a T.R.C. and with those referred to a standard community mental health program, and found that those who had gone through a T.R.C. were far less likely to become homeless or suffer from depression.”
“Another study looked at women at a rape-crisis center and found that those who went on to a T.R.C. were much more likely to file police reports than those who did not. The trauma recovery centers were also cheaper to run than the less effective community mental health programs. Subsequent studies out of Long Beach, Calif., and Cleveland reached similar conclusions.”
Related: For the Christian Science Monitor, Allen Arthur has a feature story that dives into the history and rationale for Trauma Recovery Centers with pit stops in Cleveland, Ohio and Des Moines, Iowa where readers meet some of the extraordinary people who run and receive care at these centers. One of the women featured in the story, Nikeya Clark, fell into a deep despair in the wake of her son’s murder. With the help of the Central Iowa trauma recovery center, she found stability again—including obtaining a high school degree and graduating as the salutatorian of her class:
2. “Thousands Of People Seeking Help Did Not Get A Police Response. That’s A Good Thing.”
Tammy Murga published a powerful story for The San Diego Union-Tribune on the success—and continued expansion—of San Diego County’s mobile crisis response team. The whole piece is worth a close read. Here are four highlights:
Mental Health Experts Deliver Care 24 /7. “Each team has a case manager, mental health clinician and a peer support specialist” and teams “work around the clock, seven days a week, to help people experiencing a substance use or mental health crisis.” The teams “were designed to offer those in need a person-centered service while freeing up law enforcement resources.”
Nearly Four Dozen Teams. “Three years ago, [San Diego] county launched a pilot program to replace ill-equipped law enforcement officials with mental health experts for those in crisis … Today, there are nearly four dozen Mobile Crisis Response Teams countywide handling hundreds of calls for nonviolent emergencies each month.”
The Right Team For The Job. A study of program data over a six month period in 2023 found that 98% of calls for help through the 988 system remained with mobile crisis teams and were not “diverted to law enforcement.” Moreover, San Diego police Sergeant Anthony Molina told the Union-Tribune that police dispatchers “diver calls to [the Mobile Crisis Response Team] if there’s no violence …. So, an officer never even sees that call and that’s good. That’s the point and we’re really happy to have that resource.””
Expanding Access To Treatment: Mobile crisis teams are “not just a different way to respond to the same number of crises or instances of people needing help … [Instead,] it’s enabling [the MCRT to] respond to many more people than would be responded to otherwise.” For example:
“Some of those calls are from mothers with postpartum depression, families struggling with loved ones with dementia, parents whose children have physically assaulted them…”
“Teams have already started responding to calls on college campuses. The county established partnerships with San Diego State University, Point Loma Nazarene University and Mira Mesa College.”
“Also in the works: responding to calls placed from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which employs many civilians.”
“Finally, crisis teams are also reaching tribal communities. Since September, they have responded to calls from the Viejas Reservation and its casino near Alpine … The hope is, obviously to at some point, roll out to all reservations.”
3. Seattle Safety Ambassadors Are Responding Faster Than Police.
In 2023, the Seattle Police Department took twelve minutes on average to respond to priority one calls in the city’s University District, which are the most serious calls that the police handle. The wait times got much longer as the severity of the situation decreased. Indeed, for priority two calls, which include “threats of violence, major property damage, and disturbances involving weapons,” the average response time took over an hour. These long wait times led “businesses along [University Avenue] to find themselves grappling with the safety fallout resulting from these staffing challenges.”
Enter the Safety Ambassadors. “Trained in de-escalation [and] working shifts of two people at a time,” University District safety ambassador teams, “provide directions to visitors, aid [the] unsheltered population, and consult with businesses on security issues.” As Aspen Anderson reports for The Daily, the University of Washington student-run newspaper, over the same time period in 2023, the safety ambassador team assigned to the University District provided “an average five-minute response time.”
In one recent incident, a safety ambassador responded to a knife threat to a cashier at the local Goodwill in less than five minutes. That response time is in stark contrast to what businesses expect from police response times: “We don’t call [the Seattle Police Department] because they won’t come,” a security guard at H-Mart told The Daily.
This is an example of how the safety ambassadors not only free-up the police to respond to the most serious priority one calls, but also provide a response to calls that the police department—spread too thin by an expectation that officers should respond to a myriad of different calls for service—simply does not have capacity to handle.
