1 Calling the Police for the Poor and Distressed? Poverty and the increase in police-encounters with allegedly “emotional disturbed persons” Dr. K.L.A. Roex Published on Academia.edu, May 11 2019 *Provisional paper of a project in which I plan to rerun the analyses on more recent and extensive data Abstract The last several years, the Dutch police has registered an increasing number of cases of allegedly “emotionally disturbed” persons. Strikingly similar concerns and debates about police- encounters with allegedly “emotional disturbed persons” have been going in the United Kingdom and the United States. Despite this wide public attention, sociological inquiry into the background of this increasing phenomenon has been absent. The current paper contains the first study that robustly examines sociological explanations of the larger involvement of police in this traditionally non-police issue of alleged “emotional disturbance”. It places the phenomenon in a wider theoretical framework on attitudes towards the poor. Building on the work of Wacquant (2001; 2009) on paternalistic neoliberalism the penalization of poverty, and Larsen’s (2013a), this paper states that the increase in the number of registered cases of alleged “emotional disturbance” is driven by an increase in poverty, in combination with a public distrust towards the poor. The finding from regression analyses among 376 municipalities between 2011 and 2014, indeed show a higher number of registrations in poorer areas. These findings call for a critical approach towards the current authoritarian way in which allegedly “emotionally disturbed” persons are approached. Keywords: emotional disturbed persons, mental health, paternalistic neoliberalism, police, poverty