Dave Hardy takes a look at Arizona law, which makes it quite difficult to get someone committed involuntarily. I don’t think it should be easy; there needs to be due process to deprive someone of life, liberty or property under our system, but Arizona looks to make it nearly impossible.
4 thoughts on “Commitment in Arizona”
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Arizona’s commitment law is generally considered the easiest in the U.S. Oregon’s is so bad that a lot of mentally ill people have starved themselves to death while family, friends, and police watched helplessly.
Considering the tendency of authoritarians to use “mental illness” and involuntary committment to silence their opponents elsewhere in the world, and some movements towards trying to paint opposition to authoritarianism as an illness here, I really don’t see a problem setting the bar nice and high.
When people with some regularity starve themselves to death, is the bar set a bit too high?
I won’t advocate for Mommy Government, no. Sometimes life is hard, and giving the state the power to ruin lives to maybe, possibly benefit a few who can’t take care of themselves strikes me as being not all that different from the anti-gun nuts who screech “OMG some people died there has to be a law!!1!”.
If someone wants to push that in their state, whatever. Try it with the feds or in my state, and I’ll fight.