#also to be clear: 988 cannot yet do geotracking like 911 does. although they keep going to the FCC to try to get that capacity

[trans-axolotl]

This post is getting a ton of reblogs all of a sudden, so I thought I'd share some more info and address a lot of things people are saying in the comments.

Anytime advocates criticize 988 or other crisis hotlines, I always see a lot of crisis line workers come online to say "We only call the cops in really severe situations! You have to be actively harming yourself/have a plan/tell us that you're actively suicidal! We rarely call the cops, as long as you don't tell us you're suicidal you'll be fine!"

And I think that is a misleading statement that is ignorant at best, and actively harmful at worst. It's true that according to 988's stated policy, counselors should only call the police when someone has a "desire and intent to die and has the capability of carrying through on this intent." However, 988 has a huge transparency issue--this one investigation found that there was a Houston call center where 65% of their calls to law enforcement were unnecessary. Many survivors can tell you of stories where we called the line, said that we were safe, did not have a plan, and were not going to attempt, and still got the cops called on us. I once called the lifeline, expressed that I was having a hard night but was not at all suicidal, and then ended the call, only to wake up to cops banging on my door. There really is not oversight about this--counselors are encouraged to loop in law enforcement and emergency services if they think it's necessary, which leaves a lot of room for individual counselors and centers to make their own decisions. Survivors know that there are many, many circumstances where cops are called against their own policies--we've lived it, and no one listens when we speak up about it. Even without the data, we know that this is happening.

Furthermore, even if individual call centers have better policies and are strict about only calling in cases of actual suicide attempts, there are plenty of centers that do not strictly follow policies and call law enforcement frequently. When you call 988, there is no guarantee which call center you'll get routed to. Even though it's supposed to be the local center to you, if that center is busy, you will get rerouted to one of the national overflow centers. There is no way to accurately assess the risk of getting the cops on you when you have no way of knowing what center you'll get routed to, their internal policies, and their oversight process. And yet, there is almost no transparency, and this information is not made available to people unless they spend time going through the website and privacy policy. This goes against everything in the Crisis Caller's Bill of Rights, and does not treat suicidal people with the respect, transparency, and compassion that we deserve.

A lot of advocates and researchers I've spoken to think that the statistic that "only 2% of Lifeline calls involve law enforcement" is an understatement. Requests for more specific data through freedom of information acts have been hard to accomplish. Even if it is only 2% of calls, according to this data that would be 100,000 calls involving law enforcement per year. That's over 270 crisis calls with the cops per day. That is an incredibly high number, representing really serious risks to the people calling for support. These articles talk about some of the harms, including instances of police murder after cops became involved, arrest, involuntary hospitalization, and more. Suicidal people deserve much better: we deserve care that enables us to access support we need and that respects our autonomy, instead of care that actively endangers our wellbeing.

overall, if you work at a crisis line, I really think that you need to reevaluate what your role is and confront the ways you are complicit in an oppressive and carceral system. If you want to do any type of ethical work within the system, you need to be able to grapple with the harms of the system, and listen to what suicidal people say about the best ways to support us. Calling the cops on any of your suicidal clients actively endangers us: we deserve systems of care that don't come armed with guns and the power to incarcerate us. Reacting defensively to survivors pointing out the very real harms we've experienced will not help suicidal people access care and support. It creates more barriers and further traumatizes us.

for anyone who wants to learn more about mad pride and liberatory antipsychiatry, check out my mad liberation tag, especially this post about alternatives to psych hospitalization.

i wish more people were aware the vast majority of crisis lines have the power to call the police and will call the police on you if you express that you’re suicidal because i see crisis lines being spread all the time in leftist spaces but most people don’t add the information about police and i think that can be really dangerous. it’s fucked up that crisis lines can do that and i really fucking hate it and i wish that it was more widespread knowledge so that people could make informed choices about the resources they access.