Continental Parlor 7 Hilton San Francisco and Towers Ballroom Level
Section on Law and Mental Disability Robert F. Schopp, University of Nebraska, Chair Kenneth J. Kress, University of Iowa, Program Chair
Outpatient Commitment
Moderator:
Kenneth J. Kress, University of Iowa
Speakers:
Virginia Aldige Hiday, Professor, Department of Sociology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School Jonathan Stanley, Assistant Director, Treatment Advocacy Center, Arlington, Virginia
Outpatient commitment is currently a politically controversial topic. The controversy in New York over the passage of Kendra's Law, an outpatient treatment statute named after Kendra Webdale, who was pushed to her death by a man who suffers from severe schizophrenia, is the most widely publicized recent example. During the bill's consideration, articles on it were daily fare in New York newspapers. Additionally, significant controversies respecting outpatient treatment bills have arisen recently in California (AB 1800), Connecticut, Iowa (H.F.2366), Massachusetts, South Dakota (H.B.1036), West Virginia, and Wyoming (1999 Wyoming Session laws chp. 172). Next year, there are likely to be assisted outpatient treatment bills in California, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Florida, and perhaps West Virginia.
Professor Hiday will review the outcome studies of legally coerced treatment in the community, focusing on findings from two random control studies of outpatient commitment, the first at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and the second from North Carolina, highlighting their social and political contexts and methodologies, and drawing conclusions concerning what we know and what we need to know.
Professor Perlin will explain the roots of outpatient Commitment law in the "least restrictive alternative" doctrine, and show how an alternative that originally was seen as a way of limiting the numbers of persons under state control in public psychiatric hospitals is now frequently suggested as a means of exerting control over more individuals in community settings. He will also discuss the relationship between outpatient commitment and forced drugging.
Mr. Stanley will present aspects of the Treatment Advocacy Center's Model Law for Civil Commitment (2000) pertaining to outpatient commitment. The model law is essentially a compilation of what Mr. Stanley will argue are the most effective provisions of existing state laws, thus embodying what is best in current American outpatient commitment statutes, as well as being a proposal for their future evolution.
Professor Kress will argue that outpatient commitment is not a mere extension of inpatient commitment, but one of several ways to attack a social problem that can also be dealt with by other social programs, including mental health courts, expanded and more accessible community services, drug courts, intensive community treatment. Professor Kress will also review policy and moral arguments in favor of and in opposition to outpatient commitment, expanding upon the argument he presents in 85 Iowa L.Rev. 1269(2000).
Professor Perlin will critique the other presentations.