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The challenges of a late prosecution, inevitable and embarrassing Volume 91, issue 6, Juin-Juillet 2015

Authors
1 Chargée d’études à l’EPS de Ville Évrard, 202 avenue Jean-Jaurès, 93330 Neuilly-sur-Marne, France
2 Maître de conférences à l’Université de Lyon 2-Centre Max-Weber, UMR 5283, Institut des sciences de l’Homme, 14, avenue Berthelot, 69007 Lyon, France
3 Maître de conférences à l’Université de Paris 8-Cermes3, Université Paris Descartes, 45, rue des Saints-Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France
* Tirés à part
a Ana Marques, Benoît Eyraud et Livia Velpry sont tous les trois sociologues et membres de « Contrast » (consentement capacité contrainte santé mentale), collectif interdisciplinaire qui rassemble des chercheurs de différentes disciplines – sociologie, droit, philosophie – dans le but d’étudier les recompositions des régulations des pratiques contraignantes dans le soin, tout particulièrement dans le domaine de la santé mentale, et les formes prises par le recueil du consentement. Le collectif s’organise autour de différents programmes de recherche (www.contrastcollectif.wordpress.com).

The question of prosecution for psychiatric hospitalizations without consent is an old story. It was already at the centre of debates in the Law of 1838, but was only later embodied in the Law of the 5th July 2011. Whether introducing the judge is understood as increasing the rights of user's protection is not sufficient in this prosecution in order to appreciate its real impact. Moreover, which prosecution should be specified because the contents of psychiatric prosecution laws widely vary from country to country. First, in this article we will show that the introduction of routine monitoring a posteriori, by the judge, is the result of a complex process that has mobilized supranational legal rulings and decisions as well as litigation activities conducted by community activists. Second, we will enquire into the legal framework of reference: what the judge must control, and above all what the judge is not supposed to control, including everything related to the protection of individual freedom, in particular the freedom of movement. We will therefore see how to create and legitimize the new boundaries of power sharing between the medical worlds of administration and the judiciary as regards psychiatry.