Law Without Enforcement: Integrating Mental Health and Justice

(Paperback)

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Description

This text explores and reflects upon the debate over law relating to mental disorder and the mentally disordered. Much of the debate has been focused on the tension between public protection and individual civil rights, since much of its impetus has derived from "notorious" homicides in the community and been directed towards calls for a "community treatment order". This book examines the nature of mental illness and its impacts on legal capacity, juxtaposing constructs which arise out of profoundly differing disciplines. It concludes that the contribution of mental health legislation is both marginal and marginalized, and it seeks to set an agenda for radical law reform by recognizing that questions may, at this stage, be more valuable than providing hasty answers. Many of the chapters deal with the "Bournewood" decision in the House of Lords.

Reviews

a must for anyone working in mental health care.The book is a detailed examination of the issues which the current review of mental health legislation ought to address.the contributors put together a convincing argument for new legislation that would root out the contradictions and conflicts and halt the damaging conflation between mental illness and violence towards others. -- Catherine Jackson * Mental Health Care *
The book is brimming over with reflections, ideas and proposals, some (inevitably) easier to follow than othersit is the combined efforts of all the contributors that makes this book so worthy of priority reading. -- John Horne * Journal of Mental Health Law *
For those interested in mental health law this book is manna from heaven. -- Philip T Bean * Howard Journal of Criminal Justice *
I recommend that Government ministers read it and reconsider. -- Simon Foster * OpenMind *
..The overall impression formed by this book, for someone who has tried to keep up to date with developing ideas, is of a dam busting.It produces a series of insights which are thought-provoking at worst and revelatory at best.Those who wish to understand better the intellectual background from which the scooping committee is working should read this book. -- Alan Parkin * Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law *

Author Bio

Nigel Eastman is in the Department of Psychiatry at St. George's Hospital Medical School.
Jill Peay is a Reader in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science.