I wrote this post at the end of last year but it became more relevant recently when the Home Secretary published a White Paper on police reform and decided to use the phrase “core” an awful lot of times! What is the “core business” or the “core role” of policing? –
“Everything which follows in this report must be seen through the lens that mental health is part of the core business of policing. The role of the police is not a clinical one but mental health issues are common in the population and will often be found in suspects, victims and witnesses. A person may commit an offence or cause a public disturbance because of their mental health issues. In addition, the police may be first on the scene of a person in mental health crisis or a potential suicide.”
“It therefore cannot be a periphery issue, but must instead inform every day practice. As existing guidance states: Given that police officers and staff are often the gateway to appropriate care — whether of a criminal justice or healthcare nature — it is essential that people with mental ill health or learning disabilities are recognised and assisted by officers from the very first point of contact. The police, however, cannot and indeed are not expected to deal with vulnerable groups on their own.”
[Bold is my emphasis.]
The report in question here is the “Adebowale report” or if you prefer, the Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing, chaired by Lord Victor Adebowale CBE in 2013. The comment emphasised by me in bold, above, that “mental health is part of the core business of policing” has ended up being questioned and negated by senior police officers, something I find as interesting as I do infuriating, quite honestly. Dispute about the claim occurred again recently and it seems to be sitting underneath most discussions at the moment about what the police are for, so I thought it was worth re-visiting a defence of the claim, which I would argue is beyond all doubt.
CORE BUSINESS
After I had been moved on from working on these topics, I was made aware an NPCC lead on mental health had written to all police forces setting aside Lord Adebowale’s claim – and I just shook my head.
How can this be in any dispute at all?!
I thought the claim didn’t really need contextualising, because I think it speaks for itself. My 27yrs of mostly frontline operational policing tells me that it is absolutely, obviously – indeed, to quote Stephen Fry, nose-bleedingly obviously – correct. Six out of my first ten arrests were mental health related; many missing people are affected by their mental health. I’ve never known a day in police custody where none of the prisoners under arrest were unaffected by their mental health or had a background of it. I knew plenty of days in custody where everyone was someone with mental health problems or requiring assessment by an Approved Mental Health Professional under the Mental Health Act 1983. For the purposes of satisfying my own curiosity, if I was working inside the station for an hour or more doing admin, I’d often just keep an eye on the incident logs coming in and see how many of them had some obvious link to someone’s mental health. The answer was never 0% – it was usually over 20% and sometimes as high as 50%.
How can this be in any dispute at all?!
DESCRIPTIVE / PRESCRIPTIVE
The problem seems to lie in whether we think “core business” is a descriptive idea about reality; or whether we are attempting to prescribe what we want our police to deal with – but there’s a problem with that as well.
Even if you believe, like the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Police say he does, that the job of the police is “to fight crime and catch criminals”, the reality is some of those criminals will have mental health problems. How likely is it the police can run about dealing with nothing but crime and manage to meet no victims with mental health problems and no suspects with mental health problems. It’s just not realistic at all, so even if you really want to banish this topic from policing, you just can’t.
So there!
The reality about the police role is that it’s wider than the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire thinks, isn’t it? It always has been the case the police have to look for missing people who are neither victims or suspects and are at risk of suicide or self-injury. It’s always been true the police are called to life-threatening mental health crisis situations in progress, of various kinds. It’s always been true that healthcare professionals from paramedics to AMHPs occasionally need police support for things like patients who lack capacity and need removal to hospital to ensure they get treatment for things they cannot consent to or that s135(1) warrants are executed, and only the police can do that.
BEYOND ALL DOUBT
Whatever view you take of policing and what it should focus on, you are going to find mental health plays a significant role. This remains true even if you could strip all non-crime activity out of policing – and of course you can’t do that, even if you really, really want to!
- Policing is not just about crime – never was, never will be. Even an officers’ Oath of Office tells them that!
- Mental health is predictive – those of us affected are at raised risk of either being victims of crime and offenders … or both!
The reality of policing is that it involved mental health and the reason for starting with the extended quote from Lord Adebowale is to show he didn’t just make an isolated comment – he actually explained himself to show he was talking descriptively, about the reality of policing having spent countless hours investigating this topic for his report, which included ride-alongs with the Metropolitan Police.
Mental health is part of the core business of policing.
This is as true now as it was in 2013 and it’s not really up for debate. If you can’t see it’s an unavoidable, inevitable and intractable part of policing, you may not be paying sufficient attention.
Awarded the President’s Medal, by
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2026
I am not a police officer.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 