Criminalized/Mentally Ill

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Criminalized/Mentally Ill

A space to learn about anti-carceral positions on criminalization, mental illness, and disability.

17/02/2024

Wearing this tshirt is an honour (not to mention the art is rad). I hold unyielding support for and its mission to aid Palestinian refugees.

It’s immoral that the Canadian government decided to suspend funding based on unfounded claims against UNRWA. It’s like immediately after the ICJ findings about Israel last month, the Canadian government, which waffled to support the court, suspended funding to UNRWA.

Canada’s suspension of UNRWA aid is a hypocritical act of collective punishment against a refugee population facing genocide.

UNRWA’s work is pivotal in providing education, health, and social services to those Palestinians. I continue to support UNRWA and the dignity and human rights of all Palestinians.

Image Description:
The image shows Kendra seated in a warmly lit room. They are wearing a white t-shirt with “Gaza 5K” and “UNRWA USA” printed on it along with the year 2020 and other graphics in shades of blue and turquoise. She has short dark hair, round glasses, and a contemplative expression.

11/05/2023

AUXILIAIRE DE RECHERCHE - contrat de 200h, 30$/h (Montréal, Rosemont).

Action Autonomie le collectif pour la défense des droits en santé mentale de Montréal a pour mission la défense et la promotion des droits individuels et collectifs des personnes vivant ou ayant vécu avec une problématique de santé mentale.

La Loi sur la protection des personnes dont l’état mentale présente un danger pour elles-mêmes ou pour autrui, autorisant la garde en établissement, est au cœur de nos préoccupations, car notre pratique et maintes recherches démontrent que les abus vécus par des personnes soumises à des hospitalisations forcées sont nombreux et devenus chose courante.

C’est dans ce contexte que depuis 1996, nous entreprenons des recherches pour recenser le nombre de requêtes de garde en établissement et vérifier (l’état de situation) la qualité de l’application de la loi. Nous sommes à la recherche d’une personne apte à recueillir et analyser les dossiers au palais de justice de Montréal.

Principaux rôles et responsabilités
Sous la responsabilité du chercheur d’Action Autonomie, la personne recherchée aura à :
- Recenser à partir d’une grille d’analyse préétablie, les faits saillants des dossiers des individus ayant fait l’objet d’une requête de garde en établissement de juin 2021 à mai 2022. La cueillette de données se fera au Palais de justice de Montréal.
- Produire les tableaux Excel selon des demandes préétablies et selon l’évolution des travaux.

Exigences et profil recherché
- Diplôme ou études en cours de 2e cycle dans une discipline pertinente
- Expérience en cueillette de données
- Avoir accès et connaître le logiciel de traitement de données PASW (Predictive Analytics Software) autrefois nommé SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences)
- Excellent esprit d’analyse
- Rigueur, minutie, habilité à rendre à terme un projet d’envergure
- Autonomie et sens de l’organisation
- Intérêt pour la défense des droits de personnes en situation de vulnérabilité.

Conditions
- Contrat d’une durée totale de 200 heures, au rythme de plus ou moins 20 h par semaine. Le salaire est de 30 $ / l’heure.
- La majeure partie du travail devra s’effectuer de juin à septembre 2023. Des demandes ponctuelles pour la production de tableaux supplémentaires pourront être adressées jusqu’à l’automne 2024.
- Faire parvenir votre curriculum vitae accompagné d’une lettre faisant état de vos motivations au plus t**d le 31 mai, à Diane Dupuis à l’adresse : ddupuis @ actionautonomie.qc.ca (en recollant les parties).

Notez que nous communiquerons uniquement avec les personnes qui seront sélectionnées pour une entrevue. Merci de ne pas téléphoner.

27/11/2022

Let's talk "less restrictive" confinements...⠀
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[Image description: Cover features a person with beige skin and medium length brown hair wearing a red and patterned dress and holding up a poster that reads "Community Treatment Orders Are Carceral" ⠀
The following slides are all on beige backgrounds with blue text that reads as follows: ⠀
Slide 2: Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) have been legislated across Canada in one form or an-other since the mid-1990s and are agreements signed between a mental health consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) and a physician that binds the c/s/x to follow a specific treatment plan. ⠀
Slide 3: The CTO allows the c/s/x to live in a community during the treatment process rather than be in hospital. However, if the c/s/x is found in violation of the CTO (e.g., not taking medication, missing an appointment) they can be apprehended and confined in hospital or related institution. ⠀
Slide 4: Supporters of CTOs will say it is “a less restrictive alternative” to institutionalization. Fabris (2011 in Tranquil Prisons) proposes that CTOs are actually a form of institutionalization (rather than an alternative) because they are a form of power and control which leads to alienation. ⠀
Slide 5: Fabris (2011) also explains that via CTOs, medicated c/s/x are essentially isolated in a "tranquil prison" through "chemical incarceration". Aside from how "effective" or "restrictive" these legal practices are (most of the conflicting literature on CTOs focuses on "risk assessments").⠀
Slide 6: CTOs have a strong potential for violating the human rights might of the c/s/x. Also notably, there is a strong risk of the c/s/x being subjected to new forms of social control through surveillance, "benevolent" coercion, & chemical incarceration. CTOs are carceral and can be harmful.⠀
Slide 7: Recommended Reading: Erick Fabris (2011).Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration Under Community Treatment Orders. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.⠀
End of description.]

18/10/2022

I was interviewed by about my article in and about who gets to grieve. Check out my bio for the link to the interview and transcript.

[ID: screen capture of Kendra McLaughlin on The Agenda at TVO.
Kendra is a white person wearing a black turtleneck a white necklace, and brown glasses. End description.]

12/10/2022

Repost. ⠀
Considering the brutal conditions institutionalized people faced, they began to revolt and protest for their rights and liberties. In North America much of this activism took place in the 1960s along side many of the other social justice movements that were taking place during that time. What we now call "deinstitutionalization" is thanks to the hard labour and struggle of Disability's Rights and Prisoner's Rights activists. ⠀⠀⠀⠀
[Image descriptions: All slides are Illustrations of beige grid background with pink and red text, the text on the slides are in black and say:⠀⠀
Slide 1: Resistance and "Reform, Psychiatric-survivor activism⠀
in the mid-20th Century"⠀⠀
Slide 2: Between 1950s-1970s, the populations of psychiatric institutions increased significantly. Despite the discrediting of eugenics and the highlighting of abuse in institutions, governments continued to label these institutions as having a “sociological advantage". Basically, they saw these places as useful for research and control.⠀⠀
Slide 3: The emergence of activists' criticisms of forced sterilization and abuses was amplified through the Disability Rights and Prisoners’ Rights movements (in the 1960s). Thanks to this activism, the dominance of psychiatric institutions began to declined. Abolitionist activists struggled towards deinstitutionalization and community care.⠀⠀
Slide 4: “Disability was manufactured and perpetuated by the systems that identified and labeled people as disabled; leading to negative rather than positive consequences [and] primarily existed to exert social control (violation of⠀⠀
constitutional rights) which was intrinsic to these institutions.” Referenced from Disability Incarcerated (p. 11). End of description]

10/09/2022

I’m really thankful to have had the opportunity to contribute to Disability Justice Issue! My piece looks at how professional and popular psychology talk about self-esteem, therapy, and getting better. However, they do not talk about why this is so important (or how systems of power affect us). For people in mental distress, the pressure to be “cured” may make their distress worse.
Link to the article (and entire issue is available online for free) attached in my bio link!
Check out awesome work which accompanies the article I wrote 😊

ID: screen cap of magazine article in Briarpatch Magazines website. Text under print of vase with pink pill shaped flowers reads, The pressure to be cured by Kendra J. McLaughlin. End on description.

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27/07/2022

y’all I’m so frustrated by the sanism and lack of care in Canada…

[ID: Tweet by me reads: “the cringeworthy visible discomfort I witness from doctors at walk-in clinics when they realize my meds are for… “ ?!” never ceases to amaze me…Every 6 months I go through the same rigamarole in Montreal where I’ve been on a GP wait list since 2020:
doctor: this is a lot of meds. oh lithium?! bipolar disorder?!
me: yes.
dr: you need to see a psychiatrist for these meds.
me: yes, but I need a family doctor first. Are you taking patients?
dr: no, but you need to see a psychiatrist. here’s the prescription for this time. 💫 End of description .]

03/03/2022

Very much looking forward to reading Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada!

[ID: Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada, Edited by Kelly Fritsch, Jeffrey Monaghan, and Emily van der Meulen, is a white book with a colourful matrix on the cover. The book is on a wooden table, next to a Palestinian tile tray containing a white candle and a small plant. End of description.]

20/02/2022

Therapeutic Jurisprudence proposes that Judges aren't just there to judge and decide, but to make a difference.

To put it another way, therapeutic jurisprudence is a way to think about and do legal work that aims not only to use law to solve problems but also to maximise therapeutic (helping) and minimise harm caused by the law without sacrificing due process or legal values.

So-called "social problem-solving law" says that some issues that come before the law are not legal but rather health issues.

As an example, courts that take into account the many social and economic factors that lead to the high -representation of marginalised people in the criminal-legal system.

Therapeutic jurisprudence sounds like a good thing to do for social justice, but it has some limitations, especially when the defendant has mental health issues.

Arstein-Kerslake et al. wrote about how therapeutic jurisprudence, which applies the advice and guidance of clinicians, psychiatrist, and so on to cases involving mental illness, can harm the defendant and disabled people because these processes often don't give the defendant a say or give them enough power.

Essentially, it's possible that therapeutic jurisprudence could put the need to "cure" people with disabilities above their rights and personhood.
Therapeutic models have done this in other fields, where the focus is on getting better above all else. Putting professionals' opinions above those of people who are being treated.

Finally, there are issues with autonomy. For example, a person might not be able to use their right to legal capacity if their own choice is overridden by that of a doctor or nurse, for example. This means that when someone has mental health issues, therapeutic law could actually be bad for them.

[ID: black grid background with overlayed painting of a opulent living room and text which reads: “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: a way of trying to make the law work to help people who come into contact with the criminal legal system. Using law for therapy and “cure” of people experiencing mental distress. End of description.]
⁣

13/02/2022

[Image description: When Privilege Knowledge becomes Violence is written in black font on a white computer window, with a painting of grapes in the background. All following slides are on dark hunter green backgrounds with white text and images of various woodland creatures.⠀
Slide 2: It is a historical fact that empirical psychology (and other empirical social sciences) has produced research work that must be labeled as racist, classist, sexist, etc. Empirical methods and commitments to empiricism and “objectivity” could not prevent the reality that minorities, women, g**s and le****ns, subaltern groups, lower classes, people with disabilities, etc. were portrayed as inferior or as a problem when differences were found. Thomas Teo (2014)⠀
Slide 3: Epistemological violence, when the interpretation and creation of social-scientific data about an "Other" (e.g., mentally ill people) produces violence. This violence happens when empirical data (e.g., statistics) about the "Other" are "interpreted" as demonstrating an inferiority of the studied "Other"; without considering or reporting alternative, viable, explanations of the data. ⠀
Slide 4: Epistemological violence, essentially discredits the world views and experiences of certain groups of people though "knowledge claims" or "empirical truths" gathered from empirical research. For example, in mental health policy and practices this looks like the privileging of biomedical models and neoliberal explanations of mental distress over Mad people's understandings of their own experiences. ⠀
Slide 5: Epistemological violence is powerful and dangerous because it has negative impacts on the lives of those who are made into the "Other". It delegitimizes and erases Mad people from their own understanding of their selves because these experiences are not "empirical" or "scientific". ⠀
Slide 6: Recommended readings: Uncovering Law's Multiple Violences at the Inquest into the Death of Ashley Smith by C. Tess Sheldon, Karen R. Spector, and Mary Birdsell in Madness, Violence, and Power: A Critical Collection (2019).⠀
Teo T. (2014) Epistemological Violence. In: Teo T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology.End of description]

11/02/2022

I feel livid, and well honestly disgusted about how the Canadian and provincial governments and city councillors have (not) responded to the ongoing terror and violence that disabled people are being subjected to during COVID and during the latest racist occupations. I am finding it really hard to stay hopeful. [ID: Red and yellow cloud background with tweet overlay: Tweet reads: @/_kejem: All levels of government’s inaction on the convoy and occupations highlights how little any of them care about disabled people who are significantly affected by such actions. . End of description.]

06/02/2022

I have been reading a lot about how sanism makes its way into the courtroom and a term I kept coming upon is pretextuality, an idea largely developed by legal scholar Michael L. Perlin.

In “infinity goes up on trial: sanism, pretextuality, and defendants with mental disability” Perlin outlines this notion of pretextuality and how it relates to sanist legal-decision making in trials involving a defendant with mental distress. I’m still wrapping my head around this work, but thought I’d share this idea 😊

[ID: newspaper clippings collage overlayed with black text box, a white snake, and with white font which reads: “Pretextuality. For example, when a judge is hearing a case about mental disabilities, they may take relevant literature out of context and/or misunderstand the information or evidence that is being presented. They may also read relevant data selectively or inconsistently. in such a case, the judge is using pretextuality to make their sanist-based decision.” End of description.]⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

31/01/2022

This weekends event in Ottawa…

They have created such fear and anxiety for my dear friends and former neighbours. It seems like there’s little most can do but stay inside to avoid harassment and assault by the racist mob that has descended onto the city. All the while the police seem to be doing nothing more than appeasing them.

I’m sure this will all be spun as a way for the Ottawa police to get more money, but in any case…
[ID: pink and yellow and purple diffused background with black text overlayed which reads: curious as to why police responses to right extremists always seems significantly different to their response to anti-racists? Cops will always protect the rich and the racists.
It’s baked into policing. No amount of reform can change this rotten foundation. Abolition now! End of description.] ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

29/01/2022

I’ll give you two guesses what I’m teaching in my course next week!

[ID: tow photos of pile of books including: capitalisme carcéral, The End of Policing, Police: A Field Guide, A World Without Police, and Policing The Planet.] ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
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29/01/2022

A few words on this radical activist...⠀
⠀
⠀
⠀
Emma was born to a Jewish family in 1869 Lituania. Her family experienced the czar's antisemitic policies and economic instability, which forced them to move from Lithuania to Prussia and then to Russia in search of economic stability.⠀
⠀
As a teen, she moved to the U.S. While there, she worked as a garment worker and became involved in the labour movement. ⠀
⠀
Soon thereafter she became an ana*chist activist. Considered to be "exceedingly dangerous" and among the most dangerous ana*chists in the U.S., she was often harassed or arrested while lecturing, and sometimes banned outright from speaking.⠀
⠀
According to Goldman, an*rchism was a struggle towards peace by universal human fellowship and solidarity. Due to criticizing WW1, she was arrested, denaturalized and deported (because she was also an "alien" and ana*chist). Her life was absolutely incredible and her words and activism critical and radical. I've been learning about her life off and on for a few years now.⠀

[Image description: Pink and orange lens flair with black text over which reads: No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution -Revolution is but thought carried into action. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass
-Emma Goldman. End of description.]

27/01/2022

Folks who are new to anti-carceral thought and activism, might wonder what praxis looks like.

Here are just a few ways you can limit relying on carceral structures in common (and less common) situations.⠀
⠀
These are all drawn from 's zines and the work of abolitionist activists.
⠀
Kindness and solidarity ❤️⠀⠀⠀⠀
[ID: Cover: red and green large font reads: “Haven’t you heard: cops are really bad, ways to be anti-carceral".⠀
Slide 2: Don't assume, If you observe someone exhibiting behaviour that seems “odd” to you, don’t assume their mental state. Ask if they are OK and if they need assistance.⠀
Slide 3: Care not cops, Keep a contact list of community resources. When police are contacted to “manage” such situations, people with mental illness are significantly at risk of being hurt, incarcerated, charged, or killed by cops.⠀
Slide 4: Check yourself, Check your impulse to call the police on someone you believe looks or is acting “suspicious.” Is their race, gender, ethnicity, class, mental state, or housing situation influencing your choice? Such calls can result in violence or death for many people.⠀
Slide 5: Don't welcome cops, Encourage teachers, coworkers, and organizers to avoid inviting police into classrooms, workplaces, and public spaces. Instead, create for a culture of taking care of each other and not unwittingly putting people in harm’s way.⠀
Slide 6: Learn, learn, learn, Hold and attend de-escalation, conflict resolution, first-aid, volunteer medic, and self-defense workshops in your neighbourhood, school, workplace, or community organization.⠀
Slide 7: Resources, All information was retrieved from Sprout Distro's "12 Things to Do Instead of Calling the Cops" zine. This can be found on their webpage Sprout Distro.⠀
End of description.]

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26/01/2022

In campaigns like Bell Let's Talk where talking and “breaking the silence” is literally seen as the solution to ending mental illness stigma and mental distress we see the power of psy-discourses and the psy-complex.

One might expect that the solution to mental illness stigma is to have positive representations of
mental illness, recovery, and triumph and the media. Nevertheless, as mad scholars will remind us, is that the psy-complex and media work together to reproduce psy-discourse, that is, public influence and dominance of the biomedical model of madness.

Importantly, regardless of how “positive” or “negative” representations of mental illness are in media, they are largely medicalized presentations of mental distress that depoliticize marginalized people's experiences of mental distress, and cover over the fact that much of this is due to social issues and discrimination.

Psy discourse such as those in Bell’s campaign are individualizing and responsibilizing people for their mental distress. Mad scholars have highlighted how we must pay attention to how both negative and positive representations play part in propagating psy-complex power and discourse and erase Mad people and their experiences.

[ID: Blue grainy background with Painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi of woman with plate is clipped at top of the slide. Below the image is black text which reads: “NO AMOUNT OF NEOLIBERAL AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS OR “TALKING” ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS IS GOING TO LIBERATE MAD PEOPLE FROM SANIST DISCRIMINATION. PSY-DISCOURSE SHAPES AND DEFINES THE “PROBLEM” OF MENTAL ILLNESS, AND THEN PURPORTS TO KNOW HOW TO “FIX” MADNESS.” End of description.]

23/01/2022

In light of the upcoming B*ll L*t’s Talk campaign, which reminds us Mad folks that recovery should be our end goal (and that sharing our experiences with anyone is a panacea), I’m saying, “No thanks!”. A lot of mental health narratives imply that we are only as good subjects as we are committed to “getting better”. Our “resilience” is a quotient of our worth and respectability as Mad people. You do not owe anyone recovery and resilience to get respect and compassion. xox [ID: brown background with black text which reads “You do not owe anyone resilience and recovery”. There is also a painting of a vase filled with flowers below the text. End of description]

22/01/2022

[ID: Cover rainbow multicolor background with bold font reading "What is carceral feminism?" Following slides are on multicolor backgrounds: S2: Carceral feminism: Also known as "governance feminism", carceral feminism is a term which describes a feminism which transitioned from non-governmental organization/activist labour to state-based and punitive solutions to sexual and domestic violence. S3: Richie (2012) has traced the development of the mainstream (e.g., carceral) feminist anti-violence movement in the US from the empowerment and grassroots movement to a nearly ubiquitous reliance on law-enforcement to incarcerate and punish people who perpetrate violence against women. S4: Why is this a problem?: DeKeseredy and MacLeod (1997) outline the issue of relying on policy to resolve violence against women: “[The process of policy-making] attempts to reduce the inequality, isolation, and powerlessness that contribute to the violation of women—through policies and organizations that are themselves built on inequality, ownership of information, isolation, and hierarchies that render many people powerless.” (114). S5: These legal and carceral approaches generally work to maintain social privilege and care for white, middle-class, heterosexual, cis-gendered women populations by supporting reform efforts (e.g., more police response to violence) strengthens institutions which maintain carceral and punitive structures, and the oppression of marginalized communities. S6: Carceral feminism relates to neoliberalism, It can be argued that such carceral feminist initiatives are in lockstep with the neoliberal economic and cultural shifts that have led to individual approaches to harm through protectionism and dominance. S7: References, Richie, Beth (2012). Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation. New York, NY: New York University Press. Bumiller, Kristin (2008). In An Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., MacLeod, L. (1997). Woman Abuse: A Sociological Story. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Harcourt Brace. End of descrip.]

21/01/2022

[ID: All images are text boxes and gradients and images of stationary, over a beige background the text on each slide are as follows: Slide 1: 4 ways mental illness becomes criminalized. Hint: capitalism and ableism⠀
Slide 2: Neoliberal gutting of social services; Over the past several decades, a series of neoliberal-headed Canadian governments have drastically reduced funding to social programs (e.g., employment assistance, child benefits, and public housing), which has resulted in major social consequences for marginalized people (e.g., women, racialized people, disabled people, q***r people). Additionally, this lead to the worsening of poverty and the limiting of access to employment (e.g., 51.8% of single-mother families in Canada live in poverty).⠀
Slide 3: Limited access to care; Low-income Canadians are more likely to report not obtaining health care or consulting a specialist, which means that those who live in poverty have limited access to health care and thus a higher risk of becoming (and remaining) ill. In addition to limited access to health care, most Canadians face a shortage of psychiatrists. Furthermore, while psychiatric services are covered by Medicare, many costly mental health services and treatment plans (e.g., medication) are not covered by national health coverage, which further limits public and especially the poor's-access to mental health care.⠀
Slide 4: Lack of health care in carceral settings; Forensic mental health hospitals look more like correctional facilities than hospitals; these spaces struggle to balance care and "treatment" versus "safety and security". As such, there is not much opportunity for those who are confined to 'get well". The conditions for health care and therapy in jails and prisons are extremely poor (think solitary confinement, drug overprescription, lack of talk therapy) and not conducive to health. Description continued in comments.]

20/01/2022

I was often frustrated as a psychology student. Less so when I discovered that there were sub-disciplines that address structure power and conflict. But even then, social psychologists who are willing to acknowledge racism and sexism as fact and not “a biased perception of the world”, are not the norm.

I want to affirm, what many already know and have been saying for decades:

[ID: computer screen with brown sunset forest landscape painting as desktop background and a screen with the following text in its field:”Many psy* disciplines center biological and medical knowledge as the objective truth and the most appropriate response to psychological distress. Rarely do they acknowledge and address that capitalism, ableism, racism, transphobia, and sexism impact us as people, resulting in certain experiences and distress.” End of description.]

19/01/2022

Carceral abolition is so much more than shutting things down; it’s a theory and praxis of working against prejudice and discrimination, and towards equity, social growth, and progressive policy.

[Image description: Abolition is so much more than shutting things down; it’s a theory of working against prejudice and discrimination, equity, social growth and progressive policy. By Ruth Wilson Gilmore in black text on a beige, white and red grid. end of description]

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my thoughts on prolonged grief disorder being added to the dsm. . . . [ID: Kendra speaking on @theagendatvo about grief during COVID-19. She is sitting in front of a white wall with photo ledges, a framed poster of “no human is illegal” behind her. End of description.]

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