Three Things To Read This Weekend

Jul 6

1. New North Carolina Law “Allows Cities To Hire Civilian Traffic Investigators To Handle Some Traffic Accidents, Freeing Up Police Officers For Other Duties” and “Alleviating Law Officer Staffing Shortages”.

As the Insurance Journal explains, Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed the bill this month after it moved through the Republican-controlled legislature with “overwhelming support.” Both the “N.C. Association of Police Chiefs and the N.C. League of Municipalities endorsed the law.”

State Senator Michael Lazzara, a Republican, told local television news station WRAL that enlisting civilian traffic investigators …

“is just a way that we can help cities and towns fill the gap and have availability for officers to respond to actual emergency calls, rather than take their time to be at a traffic accident that can normally take several hours to complete … They basically do the investigation, they file the reports, and they also have the ability to appear in court … If there’s an issue involving criminal activity, they just call for an officer and an officer will come and do their job.”

Here are three highlights from the bill:

“Investigators will wear uniforms that are different from police, cannot carry weapons, and have no power to arrest people.”
“They can work only on accidents involving property damage, not injuries.”
“Investigators shall have the same authority as a law enforcement officer to tow or remove a vehicle that is obstructing a public street or highway.”

2. Momentum For Community Violence Intervention Keeps Growing:

“Charlotte’s Violence Interrupters’ Show Promise, Study Finds.” For WFAE, the local NPR affiliate in Charlotte, Lisa Worf reports on a new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s Urban Institute, which found that the city’s community violence interrupters program—known as “the Alternatives To Violence team”—“has shown some promise” in its first year of operation in that “violence dropped where the interrupters were deployed.” Here’s more from WFAE:

“In its first year, the team spent more than 1,500 hours canvassing neighborhoods …. The study found those neighborhoods saw lower rates of homicides committed with a gun compared to similar neighborhoods in Charlotte. Researchers cited the credibility of staff, their training and the connections they’re able to make as strengths.”

“Louisville Expands ‘Violence Interrupters’ Program Aimed At Stopping Gun Violence In 5 Neighborhoods.” For local Louisville television news station, WDRB, Darby Beane reports on the city’s goal to “prevent violence before it happens” by:

“using nearly $7 million in funding to expand what it calls ‘violence interruption sites,’ tasked with empowering neighborhood and community members to stop gun violence at the ground level. The idea of the program, according to the [city’s] Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods (OSHN), is to utilize ‘credible individuals’ with connections in Louisville's highest-risk neighborhoods who will disrupt or prevent potentially violent situations.”

(The excellent full television segment, which runs just over two minutes, is also worth your time.)

CVI Makes Its Way To The Celebrated Aspen Ideas Conference. Axios’s Emma Hurt, explained that “the message from advocates and experts in conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado” is that “after hitting a wall in Congress, gun control advocates are increasingly saying they’ll need to change the country's culture before they can change its laws.” Changing culture to reduce violence without changing the law is a key feature of gun violence reduction programs such as community violence intervention, which is why “‘community violence intervention programs are showing promise as a way to make change,’ Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Arizona studying the politics of guns in American life told the crowd.”

3. Peer Respite Programs Help People Experiencing A Mental Health Crisis While Diverting Them From Emergency Rooms And Jails.

Solstice House is a peer respite center in Madison, Wisconsin, which aims to provide a “warm, comforting environment that individuals can come to when they’re needing a respite from everyday life. If they're having mental health symptoms or stressors, and they're needing a break.” It’s also a program that “saves[s] the County and the State money” since, without the program, the “majority of the residents would have either been in the hospital [or] possibly ended up in jail.”

“From fear to hope” is how Furman Avery, a program manager at Solstice House, describes the program’s philosophy: “I don’t push you. I don’t pull you. I walk beside you in your journey in recovery.”

Peer respite centers like Solstice House are popping up across the country: There are six peer respite houses across Wisconsin; at least thirteen additional states have at least one peer respite program; and there is an ongoing “six-month feasibility study on the potential benefit and impact of launching a Peer Respite program in Central Maryland.”

The Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association details why peer-respite centers present lawmakers with a powerful alternative to the status quo of sending people in mental distress to emergency rooms and hospitals:

“Patients experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis account for one in eight emergency department visits in the United States, with approximately 40 percent of those visits resulting in inpatient hospital admission. These hospital admissions can involve involuntary evaluations, restraints, and forced medication. Peer respites offer a more effective, humane, and less costly approach to treating a mental health crisis.”

These programs vary in the services they offer and how they are delivered, but typically share a set of common norms and practices:

For example, as the Los Angeles Times has explained, these centers all “offer people in distress short-term, round-the-clock emotional support from peers — people who have experienced mental health conditions and are trained and often certified by states to support others with similar issues.”
Moreover, respite centers tend to “employ or contract with registered nurses who offer medical or behavioral health exams at entry, facilitate medication refills, and provide medication education”, ensure that both the “management and [the] staff delivering services have significant lived experience, and that the facilities themselves be “small and homelike” with “separate rooms for everyone that participates in the program.”

And, importantly, creating respite centers as a tool to combat the mental health crisis comes backed both by evidence and powerful endorsers:

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration endorses peer respite programs; and just last month, a new working paper from the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, identified the creation of peer-respite centers as a meaningful and proven opportunity to “round out the [mental health] crisis continuum.”
Researchers examining respite centers in New York City found that the program’s services “resulted in lowered rates of Medicaid-funded hospitalizations and health expenditures for participants compared with a comparison group.”
Other research evaluating a single respite center in Santa Cruz County, California found that 70% of the guests at the respite center were “less likely to use emergency or hospital inpatient services than those in the comparison group” and that peer respites “could lead to a reduction in overall service costs.”
Less formally, in California, one peer respite center in Monterey Park conducted a survey of 193 former residents and found that 91% agreed with the statement—“As a result of this program I feel empowered to make positive changes in my life.”