Letter: AB 2020 dumbs down an important law - Chico Enterprise-Record

A more in-depth look at AB-2020:

Here’s existing Lanterman Act language, describing parameters for forcing treatment and institutionalization on the mentally ill: “A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is incapable of making informed decisions about, or providing for, their own basic personal needs for food, clothing, shelter, or medical care without significant supervision and assistance from another person and, as a result of being incapable of making these informed decisions, the person is at risk of substantial bodily harm, dangerous worsening of a concomitant serious physical illness, significant psychiatric deterioration, or mismanagement of the person’s essential needs that could result in bodily harm.”

AB-2020 strikes the above language, substituting: “A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is unable to provide for their basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter.”

AB-2020 dumbs-down the law, eliminating those critically important, but inconvenient words referring to capacity to make “informed decisions.” The state ceases to carry that burden, being empowered to take a person’s freedom, for up to a year, whether they have the capacity to choose to address their “personal needs” or not. Any question of agency is sacrificed to expediency, allowing the state to observe that a mentally compromised person is poorly fed or poorly clothed or poorly sheltered and to institutionalize said person.

AB-2020 is homeless-targeting police state drift in a nation that fails to effectively address its poverty problem. Shame on us.

— Patrick Newman, Chico

source: https://www.chicoer.com/2022/04/03/letter-ab-2020-dumbs-down-an-important-law/

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