For more than five decades, CPR has worked tirelessly to reform civil commitment statutes to reduce involuntary detention, expand due process protections, and ensure effective and timely assistance to counsel in Massachusetts and other states. Our advocacy has resulted in revisions to the Massachusetts civil commitment statute that require probable cause hearings, expand consideration of less restrictive alternatives, prohibit involuntary medication, enlarge client rights, and restrict commitments for substance use disorders.
In response to the burgeoning emergency room crisis (“ER boarding”), where people with mental illness are often detained for days pending evaluations, CPR drafted legislation requiring the exhaustion of community peer support and crisis intervention programs before a person with mental illness could be transported to a hospital, and then limiting the time the individual could be detained in an emergency room without a judicial hearing.
CPR regularly writes or joins amici briefs to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that address statutory and constitutional issues in the civil commitment, criminal commitment, and involuntary treatment processes.