Legally-Coerced Consent to Treatment in the Criminal Justice System

Full chapter in Holmes, Jacob and Perron, eds. Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., April 2014, Forthcoming

2 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2014

See all articles by Jennifer A. Chandler

Jennifer A. Chandler

University of Ottawa - Common Law Section

Date Written: June 2, 2013

Abstract

The criminal justice system pressures offenders to consent to rehabilitative treatment by granting legal advantages in exchange for consent. Judicial dispositions do not, however, specify the treatments to be followed. Instead, they order offenders to follow the treatments recommended by their physicians. This makes sense given judicial lack of medical expertise, as well as the remoteness of judges from issues of resource availability and the evolution over time of an offender’s condition. However, this system allows judges to avoid questions of what particular treatments an offender may be legally coerced into accepting, and it allows physicians to distance themselves from the coercion and more easily regard an offender’s consent as voluntary. Neither judges nor doctors are clearly confronted with the over-arching system of legally coerced consent to rehabilitative treatment, with the consequence that critical reflection on the whole system is obscured and responsibility for it is diffused. The attached introduction provides an outline of the full chapter, which is forthcoming in April 2014 from Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Suggested Citation

Chandler, Jennifer A., Legally-Coerced Consent to Treatment in the Criminal Justice System (June 2, 2013). Full chapter in Holmes, Jacob and Perron, eds. Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., April 2014, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2403520 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2403520

Jennifer A. Chandler (Contact Author)

University of Ottawa - Common Law Section ( email )

57 Louis Pasteur Street
Ottawa, K1N 6N5
Canada
613-562-5800 ext. 3286 (Phone)
613-562-5124 (Fax)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
139
Abstract Views
957
Rank
373,361
PlumX Metrics