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The Tail Still Wags The Dog: The Pervasive And Inappropriate Influence By The Psychiatric Profession On The Civil Commitment Process, William Brooks
The Tail Still Wags The Dog: The Pervasive And Inappropriate Influence By The Psychiatric Profession On The Civil Commitment Process, William Brooks
Scholarly Works
The imposition of substantive and procedural protections in the civil commitment process thirty years ago created the expectation that courts would scrutinize commitment decisions by psychiatrists more closely and serve as a check on psychiatric decision-making. This has not happened.
Today, psychiatrists continue to play an overly influential role in the civil commitment process. Psychiatrists make initial commitment decisions that often lack accuracy because they rely on clinical judgment only. Furthermore, many psychiatrists do not want legal standards interfering with treatment decisions, and the nebulous nature of the concept of dangerousness enables doctors to make pretextual assessments of danger. At …
Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb
Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article considers the constitutional and moral implications of the distinction the law draws between different classes of dangerous people, depending upon their status as mentally ill or mentally well. Those who are mentally well benefit from the right to freedom from incarceration unless and until they commit a crime. By contrast, dangerous people who are mentally ill are subject to potentially indefinite "civil" preemptive confinement.
In a relatively recent case, Kansas v. Hendricks, the United States Supreme Court upheld the post-prison civil confinement of Leroy Hendricks, a man who had served prison time after pleading guilty to child molestation. …