Invisibility and Judicial Violence: Civil and Administrative Multi-Judicialization in Mental Health at the Intersection of Class, Gender and Race

Judicialization of disability has been on the rise over the past fifteen years. Involuntary admission, forced treatment, child welfare, social support, criminal law: studies show that "disable" defendants are subject an increasing number of civil and administrative legal proceedings, in the name of compassion and their best interests. Generally speaking, social or medical intervention against a person's will is not considered coercive, as it aims to help them take charge of their own lives. Yet, the intrusion into personal life can be very significant, ranging from the control of treatments to be taken to budgeting and diet. Studies demonstrate the violation of the civil and judicial rights of defendants through expeditious procedures, incomplete evidence, unprepared defence.

Between 2009 and 2021, I conducted four ethnographic fieldworks in courts dealing with involuntary admission, forced treatment, child welfare and the control of persons not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder or unfit to stand trial in the district of Montreal, Quebec. Based on a cross-sectional and inductive analysis of these data, I will discuss the invisibility of the defendant and the violence of the judicial process related to disability in two steps. First, from my observation notes, I will show that the defendants are at the same time at the heart of the conversation -- their entire lives reviewed and discussed -- but invisible through the judicial process. Their experiences, opinions and preferences are systematically ignored and reinterpreted from the angle of incompetence and inability to make the right decisions. Il will then argue that these legal proceedings are enforced on the basis of an indefinite risk deeply rooted in a stereotyped conception of disability, gender and race.