Document Type
Article
Source Publication Title
BioSocieties
First Page
1
Last Page
22
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2015.36
Abstract
Mental health courts (MHCs) are a response to the structural violence experienced by people with severe mental illness (SMI) involved in the criminal justice system. My ethnographic research of an MHC in urban Canada serves as the foundation for a discussion of court processes that are an example of biopower. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how strategies for intervention in the name of life and health, truth discourses and forms of self-governance operate among criminal justice-involved individuals with SMI. This study reveals the tensions between the intense forensic gaze and invisibility and between treatment strategies that are beneficial for some people with SMI yet ultimately coercive and oppressive. The governance of this population is discussed, as well as what happens to people who fail or refuse to self-govern as the court compels them.
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social Work
Publication Date
1-1-2015
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Nordberg, Anne, "Therapeutic governmentality and biopower in a Canadian mental health court" (2015). Social Work Faculty Publications & Presentations. 6.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/socialwork_facpubs/6