In The Politics of Autism, I discuss court cases involving the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities.
Julia Metraux at Mother Jones:
On Thursday, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C., which curtailed states’ power to institutionalize people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and related federal civil rights laws. That precedent, the Trump administration memo argues—in conjunction with federal civil rights and disability rights statutes—increases homelessness, a claim that likely signals a push to expand institutionalization in restrictive psychiatric facilities.
The administration’s claims, according to University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos, are not rooted in fact.
“It’s just absurd,” says Bagenstos, general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration, calling the Olmstead decision “one of the most effective tools in combating homelessness” by encouraging states to augment mental health and housing services outside institutions.
More concerning is the fact that the White House instructed the Justice Department to produce the document, which Bagenstos says “suggests we might potentially be seeing an executive order” directing DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services to roll back rules meant to avoid institutionalization. The memo, however, does not change laws itself.
Last year at The Daily Caller, Reagan Reese reported an interview with Trump:
REESE: It’s horrible. I want to get to Russia. I want to ask you another question about D.C. crackdown. Would you be open to the government reopening insane asylums for people with serious mental illness?
TRUMP: Yeah I would.
REESE: You would?
TRUMP: Well, they used to have them, and you never saw people like we had, you know, they used to have them. And what happened is states like New York and California that had them, New York had a lot of them. They released them all into society because they couldn’t afford it. You know, it’s massively expensive. But we had, they were all over New York. I remember when I was growing up, Creedmoor. They had a place, Creedmoor, they had a lot of them, Bellevue, and they were closed by a certain governor. And I remember when they did, it was a long time ago, and I said they didn’t release these people? And they did. They released them into society, and that’s what you have. It’s a rough, it’s a rough situation.
Creedmoor was a notorious snake pit. See a 2012 piece in AbandonedNYC:
Creedmoor State Hospital was habitually under scrutiny during this period, beginning in the 1940s with an outbreak of dysentery that resulted from unsanitary living conditions in the wards.
The hospital had spiraled completely out of control by 1974 when the state ordered an inquiry into an outbreak of crime on the Creedmoor campus. Within 20 months, three rapes were reported, 22 assaults, 52 fires, 130 burglaries, six instances of suicide, a shooting, a riot, and an attempted murder, prompting an investigation into all downstate mental hospitals. As late as 1984, the violent ward of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center was rocked with scandal following the death of a patient, who had been struck in the throat by a staff member while restrained in a straitjacket.
In the late 20th Century, the development of antipsychotic medications and new standards of treatment for the mentally ill accelerated a trend toward deinstitutionalization. A series of dramatic budget cuts and dwindling patient populations led to the closing of farm colonies across the United States, and a marked decline at Creedmoor. The campus continues to operate today, housing only a few hundred patients and providing outpatient services, leaving its turbulent past behind. Many of the buildings have been sold off to new tenants. Others, like Building 25, lie fallow.
Snake pits like Creedmoor housed many autistic people.
