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Research Protections for Diverted Mentally Ill Individuals: Should they be Considered Prisoners?
Author(s) -
Amory Carr W.,
Amrhein Charles,
Dery Ryna
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.1010
Subject(s) - coercion (linguistics) , mentally ill , leverage (statistics) , psychology , informed consent , population , criminology , psychiatry , mental illness , medicine , mental health , alternative medicine , computer science , environmental health , philosophy , linguistics , pathology , machine learning
Abstract The number of diversion programs for the mentally ill has increased dramatically over the past decade. These programs serve the valuable goal of reducing the growing population of incarcerated mentally ill persons by providing supervised community treatment. Research within these programs, critical for improving outcomes for these vulnerable individuals, is complicated by the fact that participants may have legal statuses which carry significant coercive leverage. In this way their ability to freely consent to research may be limited. In this paper, the authors describe the practice of diversion and review relevant research on coercion, informed consent and decisional capacity among the mentally ill and imprisoned. Current legal protections for prisoners are then discussed in the light of a recent proposal to broaden the legal definition of “prisoner” for research purposes to include community corrections populations, thus including diverted individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.