AMU The First Step in Criminal Justice Reform Chad Homberg Paper

The topic is:

Law Enforcement and PTSD Intervention: The First Step in Criminal Justice Reform

The research proposal will include the following:

• Title page

• Abstract

• Introduction

• Hypothesis/Problem Statement/Purpose Statement

• Literature Review and Definitions included in research

• Research methods/design

• References

• Appendices – as needed (annotated bibliography, example consent form, example survey if used)

Running head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Law Enforcement and PTSD Intervention: The First Step in Criminal Justice Reform
Chad Homberg
American Military University
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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Law Enforcement and PTSD Intervention: The First Step in Criminal Justice
Price, M. (2017). Psychiatric Disability in Law Enforcement Officers. Behavioral Sciences & the
Law, 35(2), 113–123. https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2278
According to the authors, people working in law enforcement in the United States, just
like all other places in the world usually face violence, trauma as well as confrontations
in their line of duty. Such people are usually witnesses of death as well as suffering and
are also at risk of personal injury. Therefore, from a psychiatric perspective, law
enforcement officers usually have an increased risk of depression, stress-related clinical
conditions, alcohol use problems, and other symptoms related to trauma. The authors
argue that mental illnesses have led to the officers applying for early disability retirement
at an increased rate for psychiatric stress-related and medical conditions. The law
enforcement organizations are losing important resources such as officers, their
experience, and training earlier than they should. Therefore police departments are
putting measures to be proactive in attempting to solve the problem of mental problems
to prevent mental disability by planning and initiating employee wellness plans as well as
stress prevention and reduction plans. Programs have also been created to reduce the
effects to stress among the officers. In other cases, agencies are creating strategies to
encourage early and private referral for psychiatric intervention. Agencies also encourage
the use of peer support programs and also create working relationships with professionals
to help the officers. When the methods fail to work, the agencies use fitness of duty
processes to know whether the psychiatric issues affect the abilities of the officers to
work. The article will be used in the discussion of the strategies that the law enforcement
agencies in the world use to hand the stress-related issues that affect officers.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Segal, E. (2014). The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Model for Law Enforcement: Creative
Considerations for Enhancing University Campus Police Response to Mental Health
Crisis. Creative & Knowledge Society, 4(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2478/cks-2014-0001
The authors explored ho law enforcement professionals that work within the campus
environment find themselves responding and dealing with peers and civilians who face
mental health problems. The authors discuss a novel method of dealing with the cases of
mental health disturbances among their colleagues and civilians called the Crisis
Intervention Team model. The crisis intervention team model was created to solve
problems of mental health among law enforcement professionals as well as civilians with
mental health issues. The authors delve into how the critical response team model can be
applied by police officers within campus environments to respond to mental health crises.
The scholars did the study by benchmarking and interviewing many important informants
that represented mental health professionals as well as mental health professionals. The
informants used in the study were selected from three universities in Virginia. The
scholars behind the study intended to examine the application of CIT in the college
campuses and how it can be enhanced to work better. The scholars found that CIT is a
very creative method that involves the police working with mental health professionals
and agencies to ensure that they can solve mental health problems among officers and
civilians. The study is important to the answering of the assignment because it involves
the discussion of one of the methods that law enforcement agencies can use to ensure that
their employees’ mental health problems are solved. However, it has the weakness of
being specific to campus environments.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Galovski, T. E., Peterson, Z. D., Beagley, M. C., Strasshofer, D. R., Held, P., & Fletcher, T. D.
(2016). Exposure to Violence During Ferguson Protests: Mental Health Effects for Law
Enforcement and Community Members. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 29(4), 283–292.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22105
According to Galovski et al. (2016), very little research has been done on the impacts of
being exposed to the violence that was shared between the community and law
enforcement in 2014 in Ferguson Missouri. The study aimed to analyze the association
between the proximity of the community to violence and psychiatric health of the law
enforcement officers as well as the members of the community. The researchers recruited
565 participants that included 261 police officers and 304 community members that had
gone through the violence in Ferguson in 2014 examine the effects of proximity to
violence to the mental wellness of the police officers and the community members. The
researchers used structural equation modeling to examine the aspects of closeness to
violence, direct exposure to violence, exposure from the media to violence, reactions to
media coverage and other factors concerning violence as they relate to a posttraumatic
stress disorder, anger, and depression. They found that all aspects concerning violence
caused mental health issues. Factors such as race also affected how the proximity to
violence affected the occurrence of PTSD. The study found that community members
reported more cases of PTSD than the police. The violence of Ferguson led to increasing
cases of PTSD. The study does not offer any solutions to the problem. However, it adds
support to how the exposure to violence and traumatizing situations leads to the high
chances of developing posttraumatic stress disorder among law enforcement officers.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Therefore the paper will be important in showing why it is important to come up with
strategies of mediating the stress and PTSD among the law enforcement officers.
Becker, C. B., Meyer, G., Price, J. S., Graham, M. M., Arsena, A., Armstrong, D. A., & Ramon,
E. (2009). Law enforcement preferences for PTSD treatment and crisis management
alternatives. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 47(3), 245–253.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2009.01.001
The researchers claimed that the use of evidence-based treatment methods for people
with PTSD was not utilized optimally. However, according to analog research, the
patients may be more amenable to taking up evidence-based treatment for their PTSD
than the rates of utilization suggest. The aim of the authors in the study was to increase
the available literature about the preferred treatment methods for PTSD among officers of
law enforcement. The researchers recruited 379 participants how had different histories
of trauma-related events in their lives to read the text of a traumatic police occurrence
and imagine they had PTSD. The participant was asked to rank how credible six options
of treatment were. They were required to pick their most preferred treatment method and
their least preferred choices for treatment. The researchers also examined found that 90
percent of the participants preferred exposure and cognitive processing as the methods
that they preferred most among the six methods. The participants also thought that
exposure, as well as cognitive processing treatments, were the most credible methods of
treating PTSD in law enforcement. The researchers, therefore, concluded that
professionals should offer evidence-based treatments to law enforcement personnel who
suffer from PTSD. The article offers information about the common methods of
treatment for PTSD that can be applied among the law enforcement agencies and the ones
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
that they may prefer most and may, therefore, are more effective than others. The paper
will add to the information about strategies that law enforcement agencies can apply to
mitigate cases of PTSD among their employees.
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