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Metropolitan State Hospitial

Metropolitan State Hospital, Norwalk, California

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Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

On March 21, 2002, we notified then Governor Davis that we were investigating conditions at Metropolitan State Hospital (“Metropolitan”), pursuant to the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act ("CRIPA"), 42 U.S.C. § 1997. During the weeks of June 24 and July 8, 2002, we visited the facility. Our first tour, “Metropolitan I,” focused on the care and treatment provided to the facility’s child and adolescent patients, all of whom are in Metropolitan’s Program I. Our second tour, “Metropolitan II,” addressed the care and treatment provided to the facility’s adult patients. At exit interviews conducted at the end of each facility visit, we verbally conveyed our preliminary findings to counsel and facility officials. Consistent with the requirements of CRIPA, we wrote to Governor Davis on May 13, 2003, to apprise him of our findings regarding the child and adolescent patients. We are writing now to transmit our findings regarding the care and treatment of thefacility’s...

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Administrative Discharge Procedures for Involuntary Civilly-Committed Mental Patients:An Alternative

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Historically, state practices governing institutionalization of mental patients have escaped serious challenge. Sparked, however, by a rising societal concern for individual rights' and an increasing recognition of the pervasiveness of mental illness,2 litigators and commentators are now demanding a more critical examination of the treatment of mental patients. In accord with these realizations, this note will focus on involuntary, civilly-committed patients in state mental hospials and will examine both highly protective systems recently enacted by some states as well as failures of discharge procedures in others. An alternative system, providing a second level of administrative review, with some improvements on judicial review, will be recommended for those states which currently maintain inadequate procedures and which realistically cannot or will not bear the cost of more protective systems.

IMPORTANCE OF ADEQUATE DISCHARGE PROCEDURES

Most litigation involving the rights of involuntary civil patients focuses on the lack of due process in commitment procedures and on deprivations and abuses occurring within institutions.' Discharge procedures

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