Raub's supporters characterized the detention as an arrest, complaining he was handcuffed and whisked away in a police cruiser without being served a warrant or read his rights. But authorities say it wasn't an arrest because Raub doesn't face criminal charges.A while back a relative of mine -- a very sane, normal relative -- was detained under my state's equivalent of this statute. Most states have a very similar statute.
Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state's emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.
He said Raub was handcuffed because he resisted officers' attempts to take him into custody.
On the one hand, it is certainly necessary to have a way to detain seriously mentally ill people. On the other hand, these statutes are ripe for abuse. In my state, for example, a magistrate's order isn't even required (although I'm not sure that affords meaningful protection), any law enforcement officer, social worker, or mental health professional can order the detention, if they believe the person is a danger to themselves or others.
No probable cause is required, no evidence of imminent action, and as the above paragraphs indicate, the person is not being "arrested" or "charged" with a "crime" -- although to the person in question, it's a distinction without a difference, because the person is being hauled off against his will and held without bail or charges.
The person's final disposition depends on a hearing that typically takes about a week to occur. In the meantime, the person has been wrenched from his life, his job under incredibly stigmatizing conditions. The person is held in a psychiatric institution where every move is monitored and noted, and any "abnormal" behavior is recorded. If the person is angry, depressed and uncooperative about being held against his will, by coincidence these are also symptoms of many common mental disorders with which the psychiatrists are perfectly eager to label him. If he maintains that he is mentally healthy, a note goes into the record that says he has "poor self-awareness." Even teenagers are routinely given anti-depressants and anti-psychotics like Prozac that are known to increase suicidal thoughts and feelings. And, what do you know? Suicidal thoughts and feelings are grounds for involuntary incarceration. If he refuses to take these involuntarily-prescribed meds, he is "resistant to treatment."
Though the law technically allows patients to refuse any particular treatment, you have to keep in mind that the person's freedom is not dependent on any objective evidential standard, but entirely on the subjective evaluations of the psychiatrists. Refuse to cooperate with the psychiatrists, and you don't get good evaluations. So, any freedom the patient technically possesses is illusory.
At the hearing, the determination of whether the person is a danger to himself or others is entirely based on the psychiatrist's evaluations. There is no jury of his peers. There is no criminal charge. The person need not have every committed an illegal act in his life. Yet, at stake is the person's entire autonomy as a person. If involuntarily committed, the person loses his freedom, is deeply publicly stigmatized -- locked out of many career options (health care, law enforcement, any career requiring sensitive clearances, and many more). He gives up substantial civil rights (rights to freedom of movement, freedom to keep and bear arms, right to be secure in his person and property, because he may be subject to drug tests and/or other medical and psychiatric tests against his will.) Of course, they will say none of this is against the patient's will. He always has the choice to refuse to cooperate with the treatment plan -- and remain incarcerated in some hell-hole of a mental institution the rest of his life.
Yes, the treatment plan. The involuntarily committed patient is now subject to a "treatment plan." This plan is a gargantuan stick to wield against the patient. He can be released or re-incarcerated at any time without his consent. His own thoughts are not his own, because relentless therapy is used to get him to think the way his case workers and psychiatrists think he should think about whatever they want. Anything that displeases them is, subjectively, an indication of failure to cooperate with the treatment plan. Judgment of the progress and success of the treatment plan is measured by the same mental health bureaucracy that put him there in the first place and who supervise his treatment plan. Yes, in theory, there are "independent" psychiatric evaluations, but these are almost always carried out by other psychiatrists who are deeply embedded in the system and share the same training, philosophies of treatment, and faith in the system as the patient's caseworkers, and the magistrates themselves, not being mental health "experts" defer to the judgments of the psychiatrists.
In effect, the patient will be judged healthy when, and only when, he has pleased your case worker and psychiatrist to their satisfaction. His own decisions about his person are virtually meaningless, because with the involuntarily commitment, he has ceased to be, in the eyes of the law and society, a competent person capable of making his own decisions. Again, this may be a person who up until whatever unfortunate incident precipitated the chain of events, led a productive life and has never done nor been accused of anything criminal, ever.
The system is ultimately dehumanizing and incestuous -- the mental health facilities, the social workers, the psychiatrists, all have no incentive to deem people mentally healthy. They make money off mentally ill people. Furthermore, there are few consequences for erring on the side of mental illness. They are not held personally or financially accountable for destroying the life of a mentally healthy person and holding him against his will for years. But if they release a mentally ill person, and that person does something wrong, then the public and the press are only too eager to second-guess them, "How could you have let this person roam the streets? Wasn't it obvious?"
It's a terrifying nightmare of a system. People get swallowed up by it. Bright, normal people who were maybe having a bad day or month can get swallowed up by it and ground up, and they aren't cured until they have been badgered and brainwashed into being, and believing they are mentally ill; because of course, once you have been involuntarily committed, you are, by definition mentally ill and your continued protests to the contrary are just symptoms of your mental illness. They can't cure you until they've convinced you you're sick. Hey, but it's all for your own good, the lost years, the broken dreams. What? You're depressed about all that? Depression is a mental illness, friend.
These laws fall under civil law, not criminal law, and are this handled by the civil courts. The laws are often very arcane, and implemented in very counter-intuitive means -- any lawyer who doesn't actually specialize in this type of case law is quickly out of his depth. Your family attorney is likely to be of no use. The lawyers who are familiar with the law and how it is implemented in your state are the ones who do this almost exclusively, and they are part of the informal "system" -- they're probably on a first-name basis with the psychiatrist, magistrate, prosecutor and social worker on the case. Your own lawyer may not be your friend in this instance, especially if court-appointed (and he might as well be, because the expert lawyer you'd hire privately is just another guy in the pool that you'd get assigned as a court-appointed lawyer). If you press the lawyer, you can probably get the lawyer to admit that acting "in your best interests" means that if he thinks you're crazy, he's not going to fight your involuntary commission. And because he's golf buddies with the psychiatrist, who's he going to trust, you and your family, or the "expert?"
It's funny that the lawyers are so deeply wrapped up in the system that they can't even see the bigger picture. In the case of my family member, I asked the lawyer on the date of his hearing, if my relative were involuntarily committed, when and under what circumstances could all of his civil rights be restored? The lawyer looked at me as if I had a third eye in the middle of my forehead. "This isn't a civil rights matter," he said. "It's a mental health matter." Hmm. You lose your physical freedom, your right to keep and bear arms, and most of your fourth amendment rights, and it's not a civil rights matter? Really?
So, remember when they come to lock you up and take away your guns because you're "dangerous," because you were ranting against the government, it's not a civil rights matter. They're from the government and they just want to help you.
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