Decarcerating Crisis Responses- 3:30-4:15pm Decarcerating Care: Building Community Responses Beyond Police and Psychiatry - Kimberlee Kristel Lalane, MA, Evan Auguste, PhD, Jessie Roth, Coreena Forstner, MSW
- 4:15-5pm Crisis Alternatives in a Carceral World - Alexander Campanario Araica, Keith Scott, Sera Davidow
Decarcerating Care: Building Community Responses Beyond Police and Psychiatry - Kimberlee Kristel Lalane, MA, Evan Auguste, PhD, Jessie Roth, Coreena Forstner, MSW
As states and cities expand involuntary commitment and police-involved mental health crisis responses, mainstream rhetoric and policy responses increasingly frame coercive interventions as necessary or compassionate – even as these approaches are shown to deepen harm and criminalization. This workshop shares findings from a community-based research study grounded in interviews with people directly impacted by psychiatric coercion, clinicians, and organizers exploring alternatives to police- and institution-led crisis response. The research is rooted in IDHA’s Decarcerating Care program, a discussion series that critiques control- and surveillance-focused mental health systems and advances lived experience-rooted visions of care and crisis response.Participants will explore how coercion is normalized through dominant policy, clinical, and media narratives, as well as current community-based, peer-led alternatives being practiced outside formal systems. The workshop emphasizes practical tools for resisting coercive frameworks to strengthen voluntary, relational, and rights-based approaches to care. Participants will leave with strategies to adapt and share in their own communities, workplaces, and organizing spaces.
Crisis Alternatives in a Carceral World - Alexander Campanario Araica, Keith Scott, Sera Davidow
Although there are many people seeking to expand the way society responds to ‘crisis’ in the ISPS community and beyond, conventional clinical approaches continue to dominate. This remains true in spite of growing evidence that many of these approaches can actually increase risk of suicide and violence, decrease longevity and contribute to chronicity and stuckness.At the same time, there are a growing number of alternative crisis responses including policing alternatives, Soteria projects, Living Room models, Open Dialogue, peer respites, mobile supports and more. Presenters of this workshop will have expertise in peer respites, mobile supports, the Living Room model and a new non-carceral alternative to Involuntary Outpatient Commitment, Enduring Commitments. They will share lessons learned from each of these approaches, as well as information about other alternatives. They will discuss some of the reasons that these alternatives come and go so quickly, in spite of good outcomes, and what it might take for alternatives to stop being ‘alternative’ and become the norm.
