Therapeutic (In)justice and the Shadow Carceral State

Beschreibung

“This remarkable book provides insight into the day-to-day functioning of judicial institutions. Instead of protecting the rights of people in highly precarious situations, Bernheim shows that the current system reinforces inequality and discrimination. Based on solid field research, her critical analysis of psychiatric coercion is powerful.” — Prof. Cristina Ferreira, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Switzerland

“This book is a must-read for lawyers, judges, mental health workers and social scientists looking to understanding how the law/psychiatry interface is perpetuating social inequities and increased marginalization.” — Prof. Bren Lefrançois, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

This open access book draws on a unique ethnographic fieldwork carried out in four Québec mental health courtrooms to examine the role courts play in the organization and implementation of psychiatric coercion. Employing a cross-sectional and structural analysis of judicial practices across different mental health courtrooms, this research investigates the coercive and violent dimensions of a process that is considered therapeutic.

The book offers a critical intersectional analysis of judicial practices, highlights the multiple legal procedures and court orders individuals can be subjected to, and examines the development of a mental health justice market. The author argues that often the legal framework has little impact on judicial practices and demonstrates the impact of paternalistic conceptions of mental health and organizational constraints. This compelling work uncovers the violence of a justice system that ignores and denies people’s experiential knowledge and disregards rights in favour of holding individuals accountable for their poor living conditions.

It will appeal to students and scholars of mental health, medical sociology, mad studies, the sociology of law and deviance, judicial ethnography and critical psychology and psychiatry, as well as to allied health and social care professionals.

Emmanuelle Bernheim is Professor in the Civil Law Section of the Law Faculty of the University of Ottawa and holds the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health and Access to Justice.

This open access book draws on unique ethnographic fieldwork carried out in four Quebec mental health courtrooms to examine the role courts play in the organization and implementation of psychiatric coercion. It provides a much-needed critical and empirical analysis of these judicial practices at a time when social inequalities have been deepening and the legal devices that facilitate psychiatric coercion in hospitals or in the community have been multiplying, and where the voices of psychiatrically labeled individuals are marginalized.

Employing a cross-sectional and structural analysis of judicial practices across different mental health courtrooms, this research investigates the coercive and violent dimensions of a process that is considered therapeutic. The book offers a critical, intersectional analysis of judicial practices, highlights the multiple legal procedures and court orders individuals can be subjected too, and examines the development of a mental health justice market. The author argues that often the legal framework has little impact on judicial practices and demonstrates the impact of paternalistic conceptions of mental health and organizational constraints. This compelling work underscores the violence of a justice system that ignores and denigrates people’s experiential knowledge and disregards rights in favor of holding individuals accountable for their poor living conditions.

It will appeal to students and scholars of mental health, medical sociology, mad studies, the sociology of law and deviance, judicial ethnography and critical psychology and psychiatry, as well as to allied health and social care professionals.

Autor*in

Emmanuelle Bernheim

Themen in »Therapeutic (In)justice and the Shadow Carceral State«

Open Access Sociology of Mental Health Sociology of Law Mental Health Law Social control Deviance judicial ethnography Social Control Critical Ethnography Psychiatric Law Mental-health courts, psychiatric coercion involuntary treatment involuntary admission child welfare services

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“A pathbreaking contribution to the literature that is grounded in thorough and rigorous research, Therapeutic (In)justice and the Shadow Carceral State provides the first systematic accounting of coercive practices within the mental health courtroom, opening up for inspection the magnitude of psychiatric authority within the judiciary. In a world of escalating coercive containment, with the expansion of carceral legislation and the rise in forced psychiatric incarceration, Bernheim leaves us with no doubt that psycho-political surveillance and medico-legal coercion is an entrenched form of neoliberal institutional power that is working in tandem with the erosion of our human rights. This book is a must-read for lawyers, judges, mental health workers and social scientists looking to understanding how the law/psychiatry interface is perpetuating social inequities and increased marginalization, including with the targeting of people primarily based on race, class and gender through a child welfare-psychiatry-prison pipeline.” (Prof. Bren Lefrançois, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)

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