Prisoners Of The Mind | The Inappropriateness Of Comparing The Involuntarily Committed Mentally Ill To Pretrial Detainees In Fourth Amendment Analyses
INTRODUCTION
In addition to substandard conditions of confinement, the invo- luntarily committed experience a stunning lack of privacy while insti-tutionalized. One commentator relates a former patient’s description of life in an institution as follows:
Everything is taken from you, you share a door-less room with as many other “crazy” women as the number of beds that can be fitted in al- lows . . . . There is one bathroom with two (door-less, of course) toilet compartments . . . and never, never any privacy at all. It is also a place where patients are instantly robbed of credibility.
Nevertheless, surprisingly little litigation has taken place over searches of psychiatric patients. One recent case, however, suggests that such claims are likely to be unsuccessful. In Serna v. Goodno, an entire treatment facility of “sexually dangerous persons” was subject to visual body cavity searches because hospital staff suspected the presence of a cellular phone in the ward.These suspicionless...