All posts by Anna

Fiction Book List!

30 October, 2010media and pop culture, reading list, representationsbooks, fiction, young adult booksAnna

Almost, but not quite, a year ago today I put a call out on my personal journal looking for recommendations or lists of YA books that feature characters with disabilities.

From that call out, I got just under 200 books (many listed multiple times), as well as lists of book recs from other sources.

I’m still going through and sorting them, looking for reviews of the books, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss here any pros & cons of the books listed, and the books that are included in other lists.

Part of the reason I like books like this is that the response to pop culture criticism from a disability-rights standpoint often is met with “But, what sort of stories do you want us to tell?” or “Telling such stories is difficult!” I want to generate a list of fiction that shows that yes, people with disabilities have stories – and not all of them are magical cures or dreams of being non-disabled. (Certainly not all of the books below don’t fall into those various traps – in the document I’m finishing up right now, many are flagged up as problematic, so this is more a book list than a book recommendation list!)

So, share your thoughts! What books would you recommend? Do you see any books on this list that you want to gush about, or point out as a problem? Anything you’d love to discuss with other readers? Feel free to link reviews of the books (your own or someone else’s), especially if they specifically mention the disability-related aspect.

Please flag up any spoilers in your comments.

Schneider Family Book Award Winners List

The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

The Young Adult Library Association does lists of titles under certain topics every year.

Bodies: “They come in all shapes, sizes, and abilities…love it or hate it, you only have one body.”

What Ails You?

K-State Library Subject Guide: Disability.

Below the cut is the list that was generated from the comments on the above-linked post, sorted by author.
Continue reading Fiction Book List! →

QuickPress: The First Assistance Dog Blog Carnival is Live!

29 October, 2010signal boostassistance dog, carnivalAnna

This actually went up a few days ago, and it is awesome.

Sharon’s hosted the First Assistance Dog Blog Carnival at After Gadget.

From the tremendous response of the AD blogging community, it seems as if I’m not the only one who is excited to share an AD “First” with our readers. In fact, the themes of excitement, joy, and pride run throughout the blogs in this edition. There were also a lot of blogs on the same or similar topics. I had hoped to be able to amply blurb/review every submission, but in the end it felt like it would make this post too long and repetitive. So, I have highlighted those that stand out for me in some way in each category — sometimes because a piece is written particularly well, other times because it covers an unusual topic or takes it on in an unusual way — but also included the links for other worthy posts in each category.

Enjoy! If you can’t read them all today, bookmark the page and work your way through the rest over time.

Politicians care so much they make their message nonsense

28 October, 2010accessibility, how to be accessible, invisibility, technology, televisionaccessibility, canada, canadian politics, captioning, closed captions, conservative party of canada, Deaf, disability, green party of canada, hard of hearing, invisible disability, liberal party of canada, NDP, new democratic party, political ads, subtitles, votingAnna

Like a lot of people, I signed up for automatic emails from the various political parties in Canada. Because I live in Nova Scotia, the main federal parties that run here are the Conservative Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Party, and the New Democratic Party (often just the NDP). (If I lived in Quebec, I would also have the option of voting for the Bloc Québécois federally.) I dutifully signed up for all four of these parties, so I could be informed about the issues they think are important.

One thing that seems to be very important: YouTube videos! Each of the parties maintains their own YouTube channel, and they stock these channels with videos. Every week or two, I get another email from a political party that really wants my vote (or at least my money), and they often include links to the YouTube channel, or even embedded video. And every week or two, I respond like clockwork, asking them to please provide captioning and/or transcription of the video.

So far, the response has been silence.

I wonder if the reason for this is simply because there’s the new Auto-Captioning service at YouTube, which attempts to automatically subtitle a video a video. Surely this will provide a good working set of subtitles, right?

Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

In alphabetical order, let me show you what the YouTube auto-captioning displays when I try to watch political messages from my current or potential political representatives:

The Conservative Party of Canada:

Image: Screen capture of a YouTube video, with subtitles that read “You don’t think that’s a whole group called american this country and you have to decide”

Actual quote: Voice Over: “Adopted Britain as his home. Called America his country.” Ignatieff: “You have to decide….” (This advertisement is discussing Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s past.)

Here is leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May:

Image: Screen capture of a YouTube video, with subtitles that read “we’re on Friday evening breeze through across Canada will gather”

Actual Quote: Elizabeth May “…Where on Friday evening Greens from across Canada will gather.”

I will totally admit the Green example is not as terrible as the others. The Greens don’t have a lot of advertising at the moment. (Non-Canadians, this is in part because they’ve not got an actual member in the House. I count them as a national party because they run in all 308 Federal ridings, and May participated in the Federal Leadership Debate.)

The Liberal Party of Canada:

Image: A screen cap from a YouTube vid. Caption reads “the prime minister’s their lives for stroger’s we have a garden”.

Actual quote: “… The Prime Minister is there to inspire us to do our best, and we have a guy who….”

The New Democrats:

Image: A YouTube screen capture. The caption reads “costs are skyrocketing so why does is Stephen harper dead”

Actual Quote: “Heating costs are skyrocketing. So why doesn’t Stephen Harper get it?”

This is what I wrote in one of my last emails to my MP about this issue:

I know disability and accessibility are things you care about too, Megan, so I hope that you will pass along my concerns to the NDP Leadership: Transcribing and subtitling/captioning of video and audio content is an accessibility issue. Providing both a transcript and subtitling allows for more Canadians to be able to access the message of the NDP. As well, it shows a commitment to accessibility and to including Canadians who prefer or require transcripts and subtitling, for whatever reason. As this is something I believe the NDP values, it would be helpful for the party, at all levels, to provide transcription and subtitling for all the videos that they produce.

Of course, subtitling your video (and providing a transcript) are not only for people who are d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing. They’re also for people who have audio processing disorders, who have difficulties understanding spoke English, who don’t want to turn up their volume, or even don’t have speakers or headphones on their computer. They’re for people who just want a transcript or subtitling because it makes their lives easier today. (For example, I have an ear infection and subtitles are the order of the day.)

Every political party in Canada “cares” about “the disabled”. They really do. Each one has a little subsection of their website dedicated to explaining how they “care” about “the disabled”.

I think it would be awesome instead of telling me how much they cared, they’d show it. And one way of doing that would be subtitling their ads, so everyone can know what their message is.

The Challenge of Mental Illness in the Justice System Part 3: Victims

27 October, 2010autonomy, justice, policy, politics, violenceAshley Smith, Beverley McLachlin, Byron DeBassige, canada, Howard Hyde, legal system, police violence, Reyal Jensen Jardine-Douglas, Robert Dziekanski, taser deathsAnna

This is the third in a three-part post about a talk given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, about the interactions between people who are mentally ill (her term) and the justice system of Canada. Part 1 briefly discussed the history of the treatment of people with mental illness in Canada, and then described the current situation with regards to the criminal court system. Part 2 discussed the interactions between people with a mental illness and the civil courts. Part 3 will discuss the mentally ill as victims of the justice system.

This post will discuss violence against people with disabilities.

All quotes are from my notes and are not verbatim.

Many Canadians will be familiar with several stories of people diagnosed with a mental health condition being killed by police officers. Byron DeBassige, 28, was shot and killed by police officers in February 2008 (Toronto). Howard Hyde, 45, was tasered and killed by police officers in November 2007 (Halifax). Ashley Smith, 19, committed suicide in jail while prison guards watched in October 2007 (Kitchener). Reyal Jensen Jardine-Douglas, 25, was shot and killed by police officers in August 2010 (Toronto). While Robert Dziekanski does not appear to have had a mental illness, his “irrational” behaviour after having been detained in the airport for 10 hours is the reason police officers gave for tasering him multiple times and leaving him to die in October 2007 (Vancouver).

The Chief Justice specifically focused on the case of Byron DeBassige, reading from the Toronto Star article I linked above. She went on to state that she believes that the police wouldn’t have shot DeBassige over two lemons and a knife had they known he was ill. In light of the other cases I’ve linked to, I don’t agree with her – in several of those cases the police were firmly and repeatedly told the person they killed was mentally ill. I don’t believe police officers as a whole have risen above the ableist prejudices that lead to psychophobia (fear of people with mental health conditions), simply because there’s been no real attempt in Canada to combat it.[1. There is, however, an attempt to point out that “mental illness costs Canadians $51 Billion a year“. I don’t think we battle prejudice against mental health conditions by talking about how much it costs, especially since I think it would be more accurate to say “discrimination and stigma related to mental health conditions costs the economy $51 Billion a year”, but what do I know? I’m just a crazy lady.]

The Chief Justice went on to discuss how prejudice and fear can affect people with a mental illness: “I’d like to shift the focus to millions of mentally ill people who do not break the criminal law, who remain untreated or inadequately treated, and at liberty. Too often they are simply victims: Victims of discrimination, ignorance, societal inefficiency, and sometimes of violence that too often ends with their death.”

As a woman with a diagnosed mental health condition, I’m twice as likely as my non-disabled counterparts to be the victim of a violent crime, including rape. [Source is PDF] I’m also significantly less likely to be violent than my counterparts. And yet, even on FWD (in comments that are unapproved), it’s not rare for people to equate my diagnosis with abuse. It’s not uncommon for me to be sitting in a classroom of people who know that I campaign for disability rights and have talked a lot about the prejudices that face people with mental health conditions and have my classmates talk about how “crazy” people are violent. After learning I was going to this talk, one of my classmates told me that, should she ever murder someone, she’d claim temporary insanity and just spend a few months in care and then be released. All I could think of was Ashley Smith, who threw crab apples at the postman and died in jail.

The stark truth is too often we discriminate against the ill. We pass them lying on the street but ignore pleas for housing, reluctant to give them jobs even when they’ve struggled valiantly to overcome their illness. We marganilise them.

We need to know more if we’re going to avoid the specter of mentally ill as victims. Related to this is the lack of social coordination on behalf of the mentally ill. All who play a role in an ill person’s life must find ways to communicate and talk to each other. They fall through the cracks. There must be better communication between agencies if we are to prevent more mentally ill people from becoming victims.

This last quote is, in sum, why I felt a lot of frustration with this talk. Throughout, the Chief Justice talked about agencies, she talked about police officers, parole officers, and judges, she talked about what people can do. At no point did she quote an actual person with a mental illness. At no point did she suggest that people talk to those of us who have a mental health condition, and find out what we want and need. At no point did she talk about attempts by the justice system to include people with mental health conditions on tribunals or in the discussions about how the justice system can do better on this issue. Nothing about us without us really shouldn’t be a daring concept, but it seems it is.

Despite all of my complaining, I actually did enjoy this talk. It’s not very often that people admit that prejudice and fear play a strong part in the way people with mental illnesses are treated, by society in general and the justice system in particular. As a Canadian, it makes me happy that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is speaking about this, because her authority lends weight to what she’s speaking of, and because I know the Supreme Court is aware of the issues that she’s raising. I also appreciate that she takes the time to speak on this issue often. I was recently emailed the text of a similar talk she gave in 2005. Making law students and lawyers (as well as the general public) aware of these issues may help prevent future cases like Ashley Smith’s suicide.

I would obviously like that more awareness of these issues was addressed in a helpful and thoughtful manner in the newspapers, in classrooms, and on the internet. Chief Justice McLachlin is doing good work, and I’m very glad of the opportunity presented by Dalhousie University to see her talk in person.

Dal News wrote about this presentation as well.

“The Challenge of Mental Illness in the Justice System” – Part 2: Civil Court

22 October, 2010autonomy, justice, policy, politicsBeverley McLachlin, canada, charter challenges, civil court, criminal court, legal system, Starson caseAnna

This is the second in a three-part post about a talk given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, about the interactions between people who are mentally ill (her term) and the justice system of Canada. Part 1 briefly discussed the history of the treatment of people with mental illness in Canada, and then described the current situation with regards to the criminal court system. This part will discuss the interactions between people with a mental illness and the civil courts. (Everything in quotes is from my notes, which are not verbatim.)

One of the anecdotes the Chief Justice opened her talk with was about an incident that occurred when she was articling. She discussed receiving a phone call from a woman who had been institutionalized, and told her that she only had two minutes to be on the phone. “I’ve been locked up, and I need to get out,” she whispered. The Chief Justice related how this woman had been forcedly institutionalized by her very respectable husband, who decided she was “overly emotionally, somewhat hysterical, had convinced the doctor to sign the papers. The authorities had come and she was taken to the mental institution.”

I got the impression – perhaps wrongly – that the Chief Justice wanted us to see this woman as someone who had been wrongfully institutionalized because she wasn’t actually mentally ill. She told the anecdote as part of the history of institutionalization, having just described it as a way “to get rid of someone you didn’t want, like a wife giving you trouble.” [s.e. smith wrote about this a bit when reviewing Fingersmith at this ain’t living.] This is a pretty common narrative when people discuss fear of institutionalization, and you’ll often see this story play out in pop culture. It gives the impression that forced institutionalization isn’t wrong, except when it’s someone who’s totally sane. The mentally ill, on the other hand, can be treated without care.

The focus of this section of her talk was on the “difficult ethical and legal problems” arising in the civil court. “On the one hand lies liberty of the individual, and the right of the individual to make decisions. On the other lies the tragic reality that the mentally ill cannot make rational decisions. Surely, their loved ones argue, we should be able to impose treatment to the point where they can have the capacity to make rational decisions about his or her treatment.”

Again, the Chief Justice focused on the change in how people with mental illness can legally be treated as a result of the Charter. She touched briefly on the history of forced hospitalisation, and how this had originally been forced treatment as well. Now, apparently, people are only forced into hospitalisation if they’re considered a danger to themselves or others. (From what I’ve gathered talking to people in Canada who have been hospitalised as a result of mental illness, there’s a lot of pressure to agree. This can vary from loved ones saying “We just want what’s best for you!” and the attendant guilt-related issues, to “if you don’t agree we’ll call the police and you can go to the asylum instead”.)

In describing “the issue being whether the person possess sufficient cognitive ability to make rational treatment decisions about his or her health”, the Chief Justice focused on the particulars of one case, referred to as the Starson Case. [There’s a brief overview of it on Wikipedia, and here are some follow-up news articles and discussion.]

Again, according to my notes:

At the time of the action Professor Starson was detained in a psychiatric hospital as a result of a finding of Not Criminally Responsible. The physicians believed he needed medication, but Professor Starson refused. His physicians found that he was not capable of making a decision with respect to his medical treatment.

He applied to the Ontario Capacity and Consent board to review that decision. The Board agreed with the doctors. He was in almost total denial of the illness (Wikipedia tells me he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder) so could not relate information to his disorder.

The matter was appealed to the courts and the lower courts in Ontario ruled he was capable of making decisions. This case then went to Supreme Court and the issue was the interpretation of the test for capacity. The majority ruled that Professor Starson had the capacity to make a choice and accordingly the Board’s order was overturned.

The story doesn’t end there. After the Supreme Court decision in 2003, his condition deteriorated. In 2005, his treating physicians found him incapable of managing his care. With his mother providing substitute consent, doctor’s began medicating. In 2007 he was discharged to outpatient status. In 2009, he was still contesting the decision to be forced into treatment.

The Chief Justice then went on to describe the debate about the treatment of people who are mentally ill as being between those that argue that the law should never permit mandatory treatment, and those who argue that mandatory treatment should be expanded to cover more instances than it does. In Canada, she said, “Liberty can be curtailed only exceptionally – when there is genuine risk of harm to his or herself or others, or when a person is cleary incapable of making decisions necessary for medical care.”

One of things I noted in this section of her talk was the very distancing language the Chief Justice used throughout. While at one point she did describe how we can feel sympathy for Professor Starson’s fight to determine his own treatment versus that of his mother’s fight to get him the treatment she felt he needed, most of the time the Chief Justice spoke as though no one in the audience would ever be touched by these decisions. As I said in the first part of this, I’m uncomfortable with a circle drawn around people with a mental health condition, and another around people who work in the legal or medical profession, with no overlap. The whole thing read a bit too much like “you can tell who’s crazy by looking at them, so I know none of you are.”

There is one more part to this discussion, which focuses on the mentally ill as victims of the justice system.

Signal Boost: British Columbia: The BCCPD invites organizations to our ‘Get Prepared’ workshop.

22 October, 2010signal boostBritish Columbia, canada, disaster preparednessAnna

Via Email

Fires, storms, H1N1, floods. The BC Coalition of People with Disabilities’ Emergency Preparedness Program can help.

The Get Prepared workshop will use videos, demonstrations, personal stories, and recent Lower Mainland experiences to examine emergency preparedness. We will explore the best approaches that community organizations can use in designing emergency plans that focus on people with disabilities. Krasicki & Ward Emergency Preparedness will bring a display of emergency supplies.

Learn:
– The leading approach to emergency preparedness: Functional Needs
– How to conduct safety drills and evacuations
– Tips by and from people with disabilities on what’s needed
– How to integrate emergency planning into your organization

FREE 37-page handbook: “Workplace Emergency Planning for Workers with Disabilities”

Time and Date: 12:30 – 5:00 pm, November 25th, 2010
Location: Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, 818 West 10th Avenue Vancouver BC
Cost: $65 – handbook and light refreshments included.
Hosted by the BC Coalition of People with Disabilities.
Registration Information

Registration for ‘Get Prepared’

Date: Thursday, November 25th 12:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Location: Blusson Spinal Cord Centre, 818 West 10th Ave, Vancouver
Cost: $65 includes light refreshments and “Workplace Emergency Planning for Workers with Disabilities”, a 37-page handbook.

Please click here to download the registration form and poster PDF.

The registration deadline is November 15th. Please contact sam@bccpd.bc.ca or 604-875-0188 for more information.

Unfortunately I cannot answer any questions about this event.

Death: Paul Steven Miller

20 October, 2010deaths, disability activism, historypaul steven millerAnna

I’m going to copy the email I just received from Disability Rights International:

It is with great sadness, that we at Disability Rights International (DRI) mourn the death of Paul Steven Miller, a former DRI board member and a legend in the disability rights movement in the United States. Paul died at his home on October 19, 2010, following a long illness, surrounded by his family and friends.

Born with achondroplasia, a genetic condition that results in dwarfism, Paul graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986 – several years before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 – and experienced firsthand the need for such legal protections when 45 law firms rejected him during his employment search, with one member of a firm telling him the reason: Their clients would think that they were running a “circus freak show.” But despite facing such overt discrimination in his early career, Paul became an internationally acclaimed expert in discrimination and disability law and was the trusted advisor on these issues to Presidents Clinton and Obama.

Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, Paul was appointed White House liaison to the disability community. And in 1994, Paul was appointed a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where he served ten years.

In 2004, Paul left the EEOC and accepted the position of professor and director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of Washington. In early 2009, Paul took a leave from the university to become Special Assistant to President Obama for managing appointments and nominations to the Department of Justice and the Department of Education. Additionally, Paul served on the Obama transition team at the Department of Labor.

Paul is survived by his wife, Jenni Mechem and his two young daughters, Naomi and Delia.

Our thoughts and love go out to them as we remember the amazing Paul Steven Miller.

Paul Steven Miller’s profile on University of Washington’s School of Law website

Paul Steven Miller’s Wikipedia page

A news report about his work from 2004

“The Challenge of Mental Illness in the Justice System” – Part 1: Criminal Court

20 October, 2010autonomy, justice, policy, politicsBeverley McLachlin, canada, charter challenges, criminal court, legal system, mental health courts, NCR Boards, Not Criminally ResponsibleAnna

On Tuesday evening, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, gave a talk in Halifax about people with a mental illness (her term, which I will use throughout) and their interactions with the justice system, both civil and criminal. For me, it was an interesting, although slightly, frustrating talk (I dislike the way people with mental illness and people who work in the medical or legal profession were treated as two different and distinct groups, with no overlap).

Like most people who follow disability-related news, I’m well aware of both the high levels of mentally ill people incarcerated in Canada and the frightening number of fatalities when someone with a mental illness interacts with the police. [Read More on this on FWD: Record of the Dead. I love policy. Publicity and the Taser. What is Justice.]

As the Chief Justice herself said, it’s an issue that many people want to sweep under the rug. I often see people wanting to pretend that each incident of a person being killed by the police as an individual issue, rather than a disturbing trend. As an activist, it’s heartening for me to know that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada believes this is a systemic problem, and one that we need to fix.

I’m going to divide my discussion of this talk into three parts, just as the Chief Justice herself did. Part one is an introduction to the situation in Canada, as well as touching on issues that can occur when people with mental illnesses interact with the criminal justice system. Part two will focus on civil cases, specifically on people who have a diagnosed mental health condition refusing treatment and the response of the court. (I’m sure that will be fun. /sarcasm) Part three will talk about people with mental health conditions being victims of the justice system.

The Chief Justice began her talk with a brief history of the treatment and stigma around mental illness, focusing on how people used to believe that mental illness was a sin, or a sign of possession, or the fault of the mentally ill person. She then went on to detail how scientific advances have combated these stereotypes. (I wanted to move the country where mentally ill people are not blamed for having a mental health condition or considered weak or told to shut up, but I think we come at this from different perspectives.) She also touched briefly on the history of forced institutionalization in Canada, first in sanitariums outside of the city, and then in hospitals within it. She ended this section by discussing the de-institutionalization movement, which often left people with a mental illness with no skills to find a home or a job, and no ties to the community having been in the institutional setting for years. To quote my notes, which are not verbatim:

“The streets are dominated by many people with mental illness. We must now interact with them in society. Where once the legal solution was simple, now it is complex and expensive. Decent housing, drugs, hospitals, psychiatrists cost money. With so many competing demands on the health care, the claims of the mentally ill hover on the margins.”

One thing the Chief Justice highlighted in this section was the lack of hospital beds for people needing a psychiatric evaluation. When I worked in a mental health-related job, I know there were dedicated beds at the hospital for people brought in for psychiatric evaluation, but because beds were at a premium, they were sometimes given to other types of patients. This, in turn, both increases tensions between people who work within the mental health system and people who work primarily with physical illness (as though these are entirely separate things), as well as making it more difficult for police officers to bring people who may be living with a mental illness into the hospital for evaluation. Many of us can agree that a prison cell isn’t a place for someone who is having a mental health-related crisis, but sometimes there’s no place else to go.

The Chief Justice then introduced her discussion of people with mental illness and the criminal justice system by bringing up the Charter challenges to the system that existed pre-1982.

As a brief history lesson: Canada instituted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, which guaranteed rights such as the right to be free from discrimination based on mental or physical disability. Now cases can be brought before the Supreme Court as “Charter Challenges” – the case is about whether or not the law itself is illegal by violating the Charter. In terms of people with mental illness in Canada, if they were found to be “not guilty by reason of insanity”, they were held under a Lieutenant-Governor’s Warrant, taken to an institution, and held there without any trial, without a judge, and with the case only being reviewed periodically. It was, in essence, incarceration without trial or any possibility of parole. This was Challenged as being unconstitutional, and the system had to change.

Again, to quote my not verbatim notes:

Parliament got to work and they drafted a series of provisions, known as Part 20 of the Criminal Code. These provisions are very advanced. They have set up an alternate route whereby mentally ill people who are charged with crimes are, after a hearing before a judge, declared Not Criminally Responsible. If they are declared NCR, then they do not go through the ordinary court system. They go before a NCR Board (this is Provincial). The board has an obligation to determine what is the least invasive way of looking after their illness. May give them an absolute discharge if there is no danger to the public and they can be released into society. They can give a conditional discharge, which is a discharge under medical supervision, and this can vary from part-time hospitalization to being in the community. Or they can, if the Board feels the danger to the community is such, require the person to remain in custody in a hospital.

There are reviews every year. The board deals with their cases and gets some familiarity.

This system is working very well. It works humanely. It works in a fair manner where mentally ill people can come before boards in an informal way. It is also providing adequate protection to the public. This is on the whole a positive development.

We still have problems: lack of hospital facilities. Before this system can start to operate a judge has to say that the person is NCR. Requires psychiatric assessment in a hospital. Sometimes trouble getting them into the hospital. A number of judges have spoken out about this. Reported in newspapers. Also problems in finding facilities for young people. 13 year old girl ended up having charges stayed because the authorities were unable to provide a proper youth setting for her evaluation and care. She was sent to prison instead, which was totally inappropriate. I mention these cases to show there are strains in the system.

I’ve had a bit of interaction with the Mental Health Courts from when I worked in the system. Like many things involving people with a mental illnesses, these courts are underfunded and very busy. There are very strict rules about who qualifies as “mentally ill enough” to be seen in this court, which means that people who should be here are instead sent back to the regular criminal courts. Everyone involved looks at this and knows it’s a problem, but the money isn’t there to solve it.

FWD/Forward

FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward