What to know about civil commitment, Trump's new policy for homelessness
Why it matters: Involuntary civil commitment has historically been used as a preventative method to confine people before they harm themselves or others, and most frequently affects vulnerable groups such as LGBTQ+, people of color and people with disabilities, according to several studies.
Context: The order Trump signed Thursday calls for shifting homeless individuals into "long-term" institutions for "humane treatment" which the administration says will "restore public order."
The order directs officials to determine if federal resources can be used to ensure that those "with serious mental illness" are not released back into the public solely because government facilities lack enough beds to hold them.
The order also requires the Justice Department to evaluate homeless people arrested for federal crimes to determine if they are "sexually dangerous persons."
The other side: Critics say the order won't help people afford homes and that previous attempts at mass institutionalization frequently violated Fourteenth Amendment due process rights.
"These executive orders ignore decades of evidence-based housing and support services in practice," Donald Whitehead, Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said in a statement.
He added that the orders "represent a punitive approach that has consistently failed to resolve homelessness and instead exacerbates the challenges faced by vulnerable individuals."
Here's what you need to know about Trump's new executive order:
What is civil commitment?
Involuntary civil commitment is the process in which a judge, or someone else acting in judicial capacity, orders a person be admitted to a psychiatric hospital or a supervised outpatient treatment facility without their consent.
The specific criteria that a person needs to exhibit to be confined varies in every state, but the guidelines usually mention those with mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance abuse issues that pose a danger to themselves or others.
Modern day commitment proceedings have to follow due process laws under state and federal law.
How was civil commitment previously used?
Before the late 1960's, people with mental health issues were often thrown into jails for vagrancy alongside criminals, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The standards that states had to follow to commit someone had little legal oversight.
Since then, there's been a push to orient facilities towards mental health treatment rather than incarceration.
More than 500,000 people were committed to mental health treatment facilities in the 1950s, according to a 2010 study. That number fell to 30,000 by the 1990s with a shift in focus on treatment.
The Supreme Court has also stepped in to define the boundaries of civil commitment.
In a case out of Florida in 1975, the court ruled that an individual must pose a danger to themselves or others to be held against their will.
The court ruled in a separate case in 1979 that a "clear and convincing" standard of proof is necessary for involuntary civil commitment.
Who was most likely to be affected by civil commitment?
The American Psychiatric Association classified"homosexuality" as a mental disorder until 1973, making it easy for states to send LGBTQ+ people to institutions because of their sexuality.
Having a "mental abnormality" is typically a requirement for admission to a facility, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, which researches the effects of mass incarceration.
The group argues that having a definition that broad would imply that all people who are civilly committed are disabled, which made it hard to accurately determine the number of disabled people in the population studied.
Patients of color are more likely than white patients to be committed to involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, according to a 2022 report from the American Psychiatric Association.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
26 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump threatens to withhold trade deals from Thailand, Cambodia amid conflict
President Trump threatened to withhold potential trade deals from Thailand and Cambodia amid a border conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of civilians and left at least 32 people dead. Trump said on Saturday that he spoke with Cambodia's prime minister Hun Manet and that he called Thailand's acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai to 'request' a ceasefire and an end to the cross-border war. 'We happen to be, by coincidence, currently dealing on Trade with both Countries, but do not want to make any Deal, with either Country, if they are fighting — And I have told them so,' Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. 'Many people are being killed in this War, but it very much reminds me of the Conflict between Pakistan and India, which was brought to a successful halt,' the president added, referring to U.S. efforts to help broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May after the two exchanged tit-for-tat strikes. The conflict between Thailand and Cambodia has continued on Saturday, its third day. In Thailand, 19 people were killed, while in Cambodia, the death toll has reached 13, according to The Associated Press. The conflict has erupted after five Thai soldiers were wounded on Wednesday from a land mine explosion. In another Saturday post on Truth Social, Trump, who is visiting Scotland, said he had a 'very good conversation' with Wechayachai, Thailand's acting prime minister. 'Thailand, like Cambodia, wants to have an immediate Ceasefire, and PEACE. I am now going to relay that message back to the Prime Minister of Cambodia,' Trump wrote on Saturday. 'After speaking to both Parties, Ceasefire, Peace, and Prosperity seems to be a natural. We will soon see!' Trump's conversations with leaders of Cambodia and Thailand come as he has threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on a host of countries, including the two currently at war. Both Bangkok and Phnom Penh would face a 36 percent reciprocal rate, which Trump and other administration officials said would go into effect on Aug. 1.
The Hill
26 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump notches winning streak in Supreme Court emergency docket deluge
President Trump is on a winning streak at the Supreme Court with conservative-majority justices giving the green light for the president to resume his sweeping agenda. Their recent blessing of his firings of more independent agency leaders is the latest example of the court going the administration's way. This White House in six months has already brought more emergency appeals to the high court than former President Biden did during his four years in office, making it an increasingly dominant part of the Supreme Court's work. But as the court issues more and more emergency decisions, the practice has sometimes come under criticism — even by other justices. Trump prompts staggering activity Trump's Justice Department filed its 21 st emergency application on Thursday, surpassing the 19 that the Biden administration filed during his entire four-year term. The court has long dealt with requests to delay executions on its emergency docket, but the number of politically charged requests from the sitting administration has jumped in recent years, further skyrocketing under Trump. 'The numbers are startling,' said Kannon Shanmugam, who leads Paul, Weiss' Supreme Court practice, at a Federalist Society event Thursday. Trump's Justice Department asserts the burst reflects how 'activist' federal district judges have improperly blocked the president's agenda. Trump's critics say it shows how the president himself is acting lawlessly. But some legal experts blame Congress for being missing in action. 'There are a lot of reasons for this growth, but I think the biggest reason, in some sense, is the disappearance of Congress from the scene,' Shanmugam said. In his second term, Trump has almost always emerged victorious at the Supreme Court. The administration successfully halted lower judges' orders in all but two of the decided emergency appeals, and a third where they only partially won. On immigration, the justices allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants and swiftly deport people to countries where they have no ties while separately rebuffing a judge who ruled for migrants deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Other cases involve efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy and spending. The Supreme Court allowed the administration to freeze $65 million in teacher grants, provide Department of Government Efficiency personnel with access to sensitive Social Security data, proceed with mass firings of probationary employees and broader reorganizations and dismantle the Education Department. Last month, Trump got perhaps his biggest win yet, when the Supreme Court clawed back federal judges' ability to issue universal injunctions. The most recent decision, meanwhile, concerned Trump's bid to expand presidential power by eviscerating independent agency leaders' removal protections. The justices on Wednesday enabled Trump to fire three members on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Decisions often contain no explanation Unlike normal Supreme Court cases that take months to resolve, emergency cases follow a truncated schedule. The justices usually resolve the appeals in a matter of days after a singular round of written briefing and no oral argument. And oftentimes, the court acts without explanation. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, two of Trump's three appointees, have long defended the practice. Last year, the duo cautioned that explaining their preliminary thinking may 'create a lock-in effect' as a case progresses. At the Federalist Society event, Shanmugam suggested the court might have more energy for its emergency cases if the justices less frequently wrote separately on the merits docket — a dig at the many dissents and concurrences issued this term. But the real challenge, he said, is the speed at which the cases must be decided. 'It takes time to get members of the court to agree on reasoning, and sometimes I think it's therefore more expedient for the court to issue these orders without reasoning,' he said. 'Even though I think we would all agree that, all things being equal, it would be better for the court to provide more of that.' The frequent lack of explanation has at times left wiggle room and uncertainty. A month ago, the Supreme Court lifted a judge's injunction requiring the Trump administration to provide migrants with certain due process before deporting them to a country where they have no ties. With no explanation from the majority — only the liberal justices in dissent — the judge believed he could still enforce his subsequent ruling, which limited plans to deport a group of violent criminals to the war-torn country of South Sudan. The Trump administration accused him of defying the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the justices rebuked the judge, with even liberal Justice Elena Kagan agreeing. The Supreme Court's emergency interventions have also left lower judges to grapple with their precedential weight in separate cases. After the high court in May greenlit Trump's firings at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the administration began asserting lower courts still weren't getting the message. The emergency decision led many court watchers to believe the justices are poised to overturn their 90-year-old precedent protecting independent agency leaders from termination without cause. But several judges have since continued to block Trump's firings at other independent agencies, since the precedent still technically remains on the books. The tensions came to a head after a judge reinstated fired CPSC members. The Supreme Court said the earlier case decides how the later case must be interpreted, providing arguably their most succinct guidance yet for how their emergency rulings should be interpreted. 'Although our interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases,' the unsigned ruling reads. Liberals object to emergency docket practices The lack of explanation in many of the court's emergency decisions has frustrated court watchers and judges alike, leading critics to call it the 'shadow docket.' Those critics include the Supreme Court's own liberal justices. 'Courts are supposed to explain things. That's what courts do,' Kagan said while speaking at a judicial conference Thursday. Kagan pointed to the court's decision last week greenlighting Trump's mass layoffs at the Education Department. She noted a casual observer might think the president is legally authorized to dismantle the agency, but the government didn't present that argument. Her fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and, particularly, Ketanji Brown Jackson, have made more forceful criticisms. Jackson increasingly accuses her colleagues of threatening the rule of law. She called one recent emergency decision 'hubristic and senseless' and warned another was 'unleashing devastation.' Late last month, Jackson wrote that her colleagues had 'put both our legal system, and our system of government, in grave jeopardy.' But in Wednesday's decision letting the CPSC firings move forward, the trio were united. Kagan accused the majority of having 'effectively expunged' the Supreme Court precedent protecting independent agency leaders, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, from its records. 'And it has accomplished those ends with the scantiest of explanations,' she wrote. Kagan noted that the 'sole professed basis' for the stay order was its prior stay order in another case involving Trump's firing of independent agency heads. That decision — which cleared the way for Trump to fire NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox and MSPB member Cathy Harris — was also 'minimally (and, as I have previously shown, poorly) explained,' she said. 'So only another under-reasoned emergency order undergirds today's,' Kagan wrote. 'Next time, though, the majority will have two (if still under reasoned) orders to cite.'
The Hill
26 minutes ago
- The Hill
Jeffries hammers Trump on Gaza, calls for increased aid
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) criticized President Trump over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire, increased aid to the war-torn enclave and the release of all remaining hostages held by the Palestinian militant group. 'During the first six months of Donald Trump's time in office, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached a breaking point, hostages are still being held by Hamas despite the President's promise they would be released and the pre-existing ceasefire the administration inherited has been breached,' Jeffries said in a statement on Friday. 'The starvation and death of Palestinian children and civilians in an ongoing war zone is unacceptable.' 'The Trump administration has the ability to bring an end to this humanitarian crisis. They must act now,' he added. Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Thursday that the U.S. will step away from peace negotiations in the region and is now considering alternative ways to free the hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel. 'We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza,' Witkoff said in a statement. 'It is a shame that Hamas has acted in this selfish way. We are resolute in seeking an end to this conflict and a permanent peace in Gaza.' The Hill has reached out to the White House spokesperson for comment. Dozens of aid groups have warned that the Gaza Strip is on the brink of starvation, with one in five children being malnourished in Gaza City, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while waiting in food lines, according to the UN. Israel has argued that Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated terrorist group, 'operates every day to create a perception of crisis.' U.S. allies, including Australia, the United Kingdom and France, have similarly sounded the alarm over humanitarian conditions in the strip and have called for more aid. The House Democratic leader also reupped his calls for a two-state solution in the nearly two-year conflict. 'It is imperative that humanitarian aid be surged into Gaza immediately, the remaining Israeli hostages be released and the ceasefire negotiated by the Biden administration restored. We need a just and lasting peace,' Jeffries said in his statement. 'Ultimately, that will only occur through a two-state solution that facilitates a safe and secure Israel living side by side with a Palestinian state that provides dignity, self-determination and prosperity for its people,' the New York Democrat added. To help out the Palestinians, Israel is allowing Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to air-drop aid packages into Gaza. The 2023 terrorist attack left some 1,200 Israeli's dead and roughly 250 hostages were taken captive. Nearly two years later, the Israeli military has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to local health affiliates. That number does not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters.
