The Due Process Right to a Safe and Humane Environment for Patients in State Custody: The Voluntary/Involuntary Distinction

1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 339-362
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Patient Safety ◽  
Staff Member ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Psychiatric Facility ◽  
State Custody ◽  
Staffing Levels ◽  
State Psychiatric ◽  
Deliberate Indifference

In December 1995, the Eighth Circuit decided Kennedy v. Schafer, holding that a teenage patient who committed suicide while under treatment at a state psychiatric facility had a constitutionally protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if her status changed from voluntary to involuntary during the course of her admission. The fifteen year old patient, Kathleen Kennedy, had been identified as a suicide risk, and had been placed on “Protective Suicide Precautions,” which required a designated staff member to keep her in constant eyesight and to interact with her at fifteen to twenty minute intervals. Despite these stringent requirements for supervision and contact, Kathleen was found dead in her room more than two hours after her last contact with a staff member. Her parents brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against state and hospital officials, alleging that chronic understaffing and falsification of the records used to determine staffing levels amounted to a pattern of deliberate indifference to patient safety which violated their daughter’s protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment.

Legal Aid for Children: Some Reflections

1979 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Brian Lucas
Keyword(s):  
United States Of America ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Court System ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The Supreme Court

In its Second Main Report, Law and Poverty in Australia, the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty expressed the view that “legal representation for children appearing before the children's court, whether in the criminal or protective jurisdiction, is necessary if justice is to be done.”This view coincides with the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in In re Gault. It has been said that this decision “unleashed a frontal assault on the juvenile court system.” It confirmed that juveniles were entitled to “due process” and the same protection which the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights afforded to adults.

The Patient Safety Screener: Validation of a Brief Suicide Risk Screener for Emergency Department Settings

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin D. Boudreaux ◽  
Michelle L. Jaques ◽  
Kaitlyn M. Brady ◽  
Adam Matson ◽  
Michael H. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Department ◽  
Patient Safety ◽  
Suicide Risk

Plessy’s Long Shadow

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Race Riots ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Law

The supreme court’s 1896 Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served to bring the law into a dismal harmony with the nation’s view of race in life. The Court decided that segregation in public facilities through “separate but equal” accommodations for black citizens would satisfy the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The years since the sporadically enforced policies of Reconstruction ended in 1876 had been hard for those former slaves and their offspring whose slavery had legally ended with the passage of the Thir­teenth Amendment in 1865. To ensure their rights to due process and the equal protection of the law, the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Despite legislation intended to provide enforcement of these rights, the laws were poorly enforced and most were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Corrupting law but relying on intimidation and violence, southern governments stripped blacks of political power. Given meaningful if unspoken assurances that the federal government would not protect black civil rights, conservative southerners regained power utilizing racial fear and hatred to break up competing populist groups of poor black and white farmers. In addition to the disenfranchisement of blacks, whites sought to secure their power through intensive anti-Negro propaganda campaigns championing white supremacy. Literary and scientific leaders published tracts and books intended to “prove” the inhumanity of the Negro. In this hostile climate, segregation laws that had made a brief appearance during Reconstruction were revived across the South, accompanied by waves of violence punctuated by an increase in lynchings and race riots. In an effort both to protest the indignity of segregation and challenge its validity, Homer Plessy, acting for a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride in a railroad car reserved for whites. He was arrested and convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 segregation law. On appeal, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment required absolute equality of the two races before the law, adding: “but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”

scholarly journals Patient safety on weekends and weekdays: A comparative study of two hospitals in California

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Alberta T Pedroja ◽  
Mary A Blegen ◽  
Rebecca Abravanel ◽  
Arnold J Stromberg ◽  
Bruce Spurlock
Keyword(s):  
Patient Safety ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Incident Report ◽  
Patient Harm ◽  
Staffing Levels ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Report Data ◽  
And Shifts

Background: Most clinicians believe that hospitals are less safe on the weekends, but the research findings have been mixed. In addition, the investigations have largely examined the outcomes of patients admitted on weekends versus weekdays and not patient harm that occurred on weekends against patient harm that occurred during the week. Objective: To compare the extent of patient harm that occurred on weekend days with the harm that occurred on weekdays. Methods: Using daily incident report data for an entire year from two hospitals in California we measured the number of incidents each day, the average harm per incident, and the total daily harm from all incidents. Analyses were done separately for the two different hospitals and controlled for daily patient census. Harm per incident was assessed to determine whether reporting patterns on weekdays differed from weekends. Results: There were fewer incidents per day and less total daily harm on weekend days than days during the workweek in both hospitals (p < .05). Patient to nurse ratios are held at the same level across all days and shifts. There did not appear to be a systematic tendency to under-report incidents on the weekends. Conclusion: The data strongly suggest that there is less harm to patients due to healthcare error on the weekends than during the week. Further work is needed to determine whether these findings would apply in hospitals with varying staffing levels.

Factors Associated With Staff Engagement in Patients’ Tobacco Treatment in a State Psychiatric Facility

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chizimuzo T. C. Okoli ◽  
Janet K. Otachi ◽  
Sooksai Kaewbua ◽  
Marc Woods ◽  
Heather Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Control ◽  
Subjective Norms ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Perceived Behavioral Control ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Psychiatric Facility ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Tobacco Treatment ◽  
State Psychiatric

BACKGROUND: Persons with mental illnesses (MI) who use tobacco are likely to experience poorer physical health and worsened psychiatric symptomology as compared to their non–tobacco-using counterparts. Therefore, engaging them in treatment is an important aspect of evidence-based care. OBJECTIVE: To use the theory of planned behavior to examine factors associated with intentions to provide and the provision of evidence-based tobacco treatment. DESIGN: This study is based on a cross-sectional analysis of survey data from 195 staff at a state psychiatric hospital. Results: When controlling for demographic variables, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control toward providing tobacco treatment were associated with intentions to provide tobacco treatment, but only subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were associated with reported provision of evidence-based tobacco treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding factors that influence provider delivery of tobacco treatment can better determine strategies to reduce the disproportionate tobacco use and related illnesses in behavioral health settings.

Need for a more Democratic Procedure of Amending the Constitution

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-688
Author(s):  
Seba Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Electoral Control ◽  
Democratic Procedure

That final legislative authority in this country is lodged in the letter of a constitution that is amended with the greatest difficulty, and with a supreme court which is entirely independent of electoral control has become a commonplace of political discussion.To quote Professor Goodnow: “Acts of congress and of state legislatures are declared to be unconstitutional ‥‥ because they cannot be made to conform to a conception of the organization and powers of government which we have inherited from the eighteenth century;” and Dr. Blaine F. Moore: “If we may judge from the decisions based on the due process clause in the fourteenth amendment and applying to the States, the court has it in its power to make the similar clause in the fifth amendment cover practically all federal legislation dealing with new problems concerning which there are few or no precedents. If the court does make this entirely possible extension of its power, then the legislation dealing with the more recent and pressing questions is under the control of the popularly inaccessible justices of the supreme court.”Both these quotations are from studies published before the adoption of the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments, but they are only a little less true now than then, as an analysis of the history of those amendments will show.

The Supreme Court's ‘Return’ to Economic Regulation

1986 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 91-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Government Regulation ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Substantive Reason

There is a standard historical lore of the Supreme Court's role in the economy and it runs as follows. The due process clause, like the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, was enacted after the Civil War to help blacks. The Supreme Court proceeded to empty the amendment of its protections for minorities and then, from the turn of the century on, used the due process clause to protect business from government regulation. It did so (1) by interpreting the word person in the amendment to include the corporation and (2) by finding that the clause not only for-bade the government from interfering with private property unless it followed fair procedures, but also forbade the government to do so unless it had a good, substantive reason. Substantive due process meant that no statute regulating property was constitutional unless it was reasonable, and the Court was the final arbiter of reasonableness. The Court's approach to reasonableness was that free market laissez-faire was the rule, and government regulation the exception.

Constitutional Law in 1917–1918. II: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1917

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Thomas Reed Powell
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eminent Domain ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Turn On ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Due Process Of Law ◽  
Pennsylvania Hospital ◽  
Constitutional Decisions ◽  
Proper Interpretation

There is little or no homogeneity to the questions to be considered under the head of retroactive legislation. A dispute whether a state has passed a law impairing the obligation of contracts may turn on a question as to the proper interpretation or application of language, or on opposing views of what is sufficient consideration or what agreements are against public policy. It was under the obligation-of-contracts clause that the Pennsylvania Hospital case decided that the power of governmental authorities to exercise eminent domain could not be bargained away. The crucial question is more often whether alleged rights existed than whether undoubted rights have been impaired. The Fourteenth Amendment and the doctrine of vested rights combine to make the obligation-of-contracts clause almost superfluous, as it is difficult to think of any impairment of the obligation of contracts which that clause inhibits which could not equally well be held deprivations of liberty or property without due process of law.This is apparent from the fact that retroactive legislation by Congress is questioned under the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment, a contract being regarded as a property right that can be interfered with only when there is sufficient justification for what is done.

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