Policing ‘Vancouver’s mental health crisis’: a critical discourse analysis

Abstract

In Canada and other western nations there has been an unprecedented expansion of criminal justice systems and a well documented increase of contact between people with mental illness and the police. Canadian police, especially in Vancouver, British Columbia, have been increasingly at the forefront of discourse and regulation specific to mental health. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this paper explores this claim through a case study of four Vancouver Police Department (VPD) policy reports on “Vancouver’s mental health crisis” from 2008–2013, which include recommendations for action. Analyzed is the VPD’s role in framing issues of mental health in one urban space. This study is the first analysis to critically examine the VPD reports on mental health in Vancouver, B.C. The reports reproduce negative discourses about deinstitutionalization, mental illness and dangerousness that may contribute to further stigma and discrimination of persons with mental illness. Policing reports are widely drawn upon, thus critical analyses are particularly significant for policy makers and public health professionals in and outside of Canada.

Supportive housing and surveillance

“…Such strategies of intervention are evidenced in urban spaces where the visibility of addiction, mental health and homelessness has been reduced with an increase of ‘spaces of care’ such as the provision of emergency shelters, some supportive housing, and other means of ‘re-institutionalization and circulation’ compatible with the comfort, containment and control of potentially disruptive populations (Conradson 2003; DeVerteuil, 2003; 2009; Johnsen, Cloke & May, 2005). Indeed, such dynamics, including the pairing of medical and enforcement-based approaches, have increasingly been in play in Vancouver, Canada, which is home to a large population of urban poor individuals contending with mental health and addictions (Boyd & Kerr, 2015; Boyd, Boyd & Kerr, 2015). …”

“…most dramatically in Vancouver’s DTES, Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood, located on unceded Coast Salish territory (Indigenous land that was never officially surrendered) (Boyd & Kerr, 2015; City of Vancouver, 2012, p. 8). While the DTES is home to a diverse population (with a sizeable Aboriginal presence), it is also a socially produced and contested space constructed by neoliberal economic policies, policing, health and housing initiatives, municipal, provincial and federal policies, historical power relations, and race, class and gender inequity (Anderson, 1990; Schatz, 2010).…”

“…As Ng and Van Deen (2015, p. 3) point out, “if a client on extended leave ii is found to be not taking their medication or perhaps violating a policy under their housing agreement, the police presence allows for the possibility of enforcement to happen.” 2) The VPD are significant institutionally-based knowledge producers that participate in an institutional nexus by helping to define the nature of mental health and addiction in ways that correspond with their institutional priorities, such as advancing biomedical/criminal frameworks that often counter cultural and structural understandings of mental health and addiction (Boyd & Kerr, 2015). For example, the more recent unitary conceptual framing of mental health and addiction by the VPD and other institutional players further serves to expand the carceral net of social control by linking mental health and addiction to discourses of dangerousness, the need for increased policing and surveillance, and the failure of deinstitutionalization (Boyd & Kerr, 2015). However, not all people with mental health problems use illegal drugs, nor do all illicit drug users have mental health problems (see Boyd et al, 2015; Rush and Nadeau, 2011).…”

“…Critical research indicates that what may be more significant than specific models of care for people struggling with mental health is “the degree to which they [individuals] experience control over their lives and their choices” (Morrow et al, 2010, p. 35). In the DTES, federal drug prohibition and the provincial Mental Health Act both serve to exacerbate tensions between support and impositions of control for people who use illicit drugs and those identified as having mental health problems (Boyd & Kerr, 2015; Boyd et al, 2015). …”

Visual and narrative representations of mental health and addiction by law enforcement

“…It is also achieved through a framing of Canada’s most impoverished urban neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, as a deviant space predominantly populated by people with mental health and addiction problems. Drawing from an earlier textual analysis of four Vancouver Police Department reports (from 2008 to 2013) (Boyd & Kerr, 2015), this article extends our focus to images and discursive framing in the first two VPD reports (the last two reports do not include images). The two early VPD reports (Wilson-Bates, 2008 & VPD, 2009) are particularly significant because they introduce the DTES, problems of addiction, mental illness, and dangerousness, as well as policy recommendations.…”