NCJ Number
96723
Date Published
1982
Length
525 pages
Annotation
This volume focuses on the legal issues surrounding the examination, treatment, and release of offenders detained in Canadian prisons and psychiatric hospitals.
Abstract
An introductory chapter enumerates the various methods by which an individual caught up in the criminal process may be placed in the hands of the institutional psychiatrist. Subsequent chapters discuss the psychiatric interrogation of accused persons, the myth of confidentiality, treatment forms, offenders' rights to refuse and to be provided with psychiatric treatment, and the psychiatrist as jailer. The volume notes that the prospect of ever demonstrating the widespread psychiatric rehabilitation of Canada's disordered offenders in terms of recidivism is made doubtful by the existence of several potential impediments: the limitations of psychiatric techniques, institutional psychiatry as an inherently low-percentage proposition, the lack of certain rights and freedoms, and the problem of ensuring treatment for disordered offenders. This lack of mentally disordered offenders' rights in Canada may be adversely affecting the relationship between psychiatrists and their captive patients and detracting from the quality of care provided. Recommendations are made for needed changes in Canada's present law. Appendixes present selected provisions in provincial mental health legislation, provincial correctional legislation, and in Federal legislation applicable to the treatment and release of mentally disordered offenders. Chapter notes, an index, and over 400 references are included.