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disorder. Further, these inmates were found to have other comorbid psychiatric dis-
orders. The researchers concluded that codisordered arrestees require mental health
policy development in three key areas: improving the treatment of the codisordered
when they are in crisis, improving the jails' identification of and response to the
codisordered mentally ill, and developing community treatment facilities to address
the needs of the codisordered mentally ill. These same researchers concluded that
there is little choice but to reform the current health care delivery system in order
to accommodate and properly treat the mentally disordered in jail.
Alleviating problems such as those just described may start at a more basic level by
invoking mandatory mentally ill training sessions for police officers. These training
sessions are designed to keep the mentally ill from initially ending up in jail, as they
do currently, making it more difficult to remove them from those conditions after
the fact. Educational sessions appear to be a useful concept in this regard.
Godschalx (1984) described a program developed to educate police officers
on the various aspects of mental illness in an attempt to have them deal more
effectively and efficiently with this population, in addition to helping the officers
more accurately understand the psychological processes involved with the mentally
ill. A brief questionnaire was given to a sample of officers before undergoing a
training session on the mentally ill. After the educational program was completed,
the questionnaire was administered again. Officers not attending the program were
shown to make no change in their understanding of mental illness. Conversely, those
who completed the program understood a statistically significant greater amount:
about the mentally ill. However, these same officers did not change their inherent
attitudes toward mental illness despite the training.
These results beg the question of whether police officers should be mandated to
learn more in-depth information regarding the mentally ill so as not to make faulty
decisions regarding their treatment. Policy implications relating to these findings
are good evidence that programs of this nature should be implemented.

Suggestions for Future Research

Areas related to future research are, not surprisingly, wide open. The few arti-
cles described here are valuable contributions to the study of the police and the
mentally ill. Virtually any other scientific information which could advance the
understanding of police officers' perceptions regarding the mental ill is in need.
More specifically, pre- and post-test evaluations of police officers' training in,
and understanding of, the mentally disordered would be of value in detecting the
understanding of the police officers' learning curve on the mentally ill. Further,
data obtained from mentally ill persons themselves would permit a converse view^7
of the treatment of the mentally ill by police officers or law enforcement in general.
This would allow for further understanding of the effective and ineffective manners
in which to handle different types of police situations involving the mentally ill.