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Access To The Courts For Persons Subject To Lps Commitments

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This handout outlines the methods of obtaining access to the courts for persons subject to mental health commitments under the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act.

I. 72-Hour Hold (Welf. & Inst. Code [WIC] §§5150 et seq.):

A. Habeas Corpus -- there is no specific statutory right to a writ of habeas corpus for persons detained on 72-hour holds.

However, all persons retain their fundamental constitutional rights to petition the courts for a writ of habeas corpus. Calif. Const., art.1, §11; U.S. Const., art.1, §9, cl.2. And, any person committed to a state hospital has a statutory right to a writ of habeas corpus. WIC §7250. In addition, every person unlawfully imprisoned or restrained of his or her liberty under any pretense whatsoever may bring a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of the detention. Penal Code §1473.

Note: The above writ provisions are applicable to all mental patients, regardless of the length of the...

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To Combat Disability Hate Crime, We Must Understand Why People Commit It

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After the Equality and Human Rights Commission 2011 report on disability hate crime, Hidden in Plain Sight, the government agreed to publish perpetrator analysis. Yet despite repeated requests it has not. So the Disability Hate Crime Network, a voluntary group campaigning against the crime, carried out a small, online survey of 100 disabled people last month to ask them more about the perpetrators of hate crimes. We asked about the gender, race and age of the attackers, location of the incident, whether the attacker acted alone or in a group, and about perceived motivation.

More than half of respondents (57%) said they were attacked on the street, and one-fifth on public transport. A quarter of incidents occurred at home. Other people were attacked in pubs and shops, with some mentioning social media. Perpetrators were overwhelmingly white.

Around half (49%) of all attacks were group based...

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PERSPECTIVES: The Reservation Wages of Social Security Disability Insurance Beneficiaries

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Background

In the economics literature, the term "reservation wage" has been used with two different meanings. In the job search literature, the term refers to the lowest wage a person would accept if the person has to pay a positive sum to gain another job offer from a wage distribution (Mortensen 1986). In the labor supply literature (Killingsworth 1983), it has been used as the lowest wage at which a person will work, which has also been referred to as the "asking wage." In this article, the reservation wage is not used within the context of the job search literature given that most DI beneficiaries do not search for jobs (Hennessey and Muller 1994). Instead, the reservation wage is used in the same sense as that of the labor supply literature, as detailed below.

In the standard labor leisure choice model of the labor supply literature, individuals,,,

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Federal Disability Program Induces Child Drugging In Low-income Families

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NewsTarget) A $10 billion federal disability program gives low-income parents a strong financial incentive to have their children diagnosed with behavioral disorders and prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs. This is the core finding of a recent Boston Globe in-depth investigation.

Congress created Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in 1974 to aid the aged, blind and severely physically disabled, such as children with cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. Yet per the Globe, half of today's SSI recipients are children diagnosed with mental disorders such as ADHD and bipolar. But to qualify, those children really need to be on prescription drugs. Per the SSI associate commissioner's own words, "medication helps confirm a diagnosis."

In 1990 only 8 percent of children received SSI funds for behavioral issues; by 2009, that percentage had soared to 53 percent. Shockingly, children under 5 form the fastest-growing segment of this steep trend.

The article's author, Patricia Wen, reports this has, "created, for...

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