ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a forum for voices of people who have been subject to involuntary detention, de facto detention, informal confinement, and compulsory treatment in the community. Involuntary Detention and Therapeutic Jurisprudence seeks to critique the decision-making process in relation to mandated treatment and confinement of persons with mental illnesses and persons with intellectual disabilities. The book focuses upon the tensions faced between competing clinical, legal and ethical principles in relation to the use of coercive treatment. It evaluates how the Victorian judiciary has analysed dangerousness, an important criterion in the long-term involuntary detention of people with mental illnesses. The book proves that sanism and pretextuality reflect a specific kind of corrosive prejudice that is at the roots of so much that is mental disability law". It outlines upon an historical overview of the experience of people with intellectual disabilities in institutions.