Correctional facilities are obligated to provide psychotropic medications, as part of standard psychiatric care, to inmates with serious mental illness. The right to refuse such medication treatment has become one of the most important and contested areas of legal regulation of correctional mental health. This article will focus on the three cases that have come before the U.S. Supreme Court thus far, as well as their implications for future medicolegal directions in pursuing involuntary treatment.
AppelbaumP. S. (2012). Law & psychiatry: Treatment of incompetent, dangerous criminal defendants: Parsing the law. Psychiatric Services, 63, 630–632. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.201200630
2.
GerbasiJ. B., ScottC. L. (2004). Sell v. U.S.: Involuntary medication to restore trial competency—A workable standard?. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 32, 83–90.
3.
HicksJ. W. (2016). Legal regulation of psychiatry. In RosnerR., ScottC. (Eds.), Principles and practice of forensic psychiatry (3rd ed., pp. 1009–1012). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
4.
JamesD. J., GlazeL. E. (2006). Mental health problems of prison and jail inmates (NCJ 213600). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/mhppji.pdf
5.
Riggins v. Nevada, 504 U.S. 127 (1992).
6.
Sell v. U.S., 539 U.S. 166, 123 S. Ct. 2174 (2003).