Disability Law

Neighbors Notified of ?Forensic Patients?

By Danielle

The Oregon World has an article on an Oregon police chief who circulated notices to residents who lived near the Cedar Bay mental health community home in Oregon, informing them that the community home housed “forensic patients,” people found guilty of criminal acts who receive mental health care instead of jail time.

The only mention of the patients’ right to privacy and due process in the article is this:

Coos County District Attorney R. Paul Frasier said both Scibelli?s and Beckett?s actions were within the limits of the law. He noted that only sex offenders must register their place of residence with police, so Beckett never needed to contact Scibelli. At the same time, Frasier suggested Scibelli was not in the wrong in notifying the neighborhood.

?Someone who is sent to be adjudicated and has a mental handicap, I?m not sure they are a protected class,? he said.

Frasier said there is a law preventing discrimination in the sale or rental of facilities to people with mental impairments, but that would not seem to apply.

The District Attorney was the wrong person to ask - prosecutors are not exactly the protectors of our civil rights. The police chief acted wrongfully in notifying the neighborhood, as I see it. Because the notice deprived the patients of a liberty interest, the patients were entitled to due process (that is, notice and the opportunity to be heard) before the neighbors were to be notified, which the article does not indicate they received.

Full post as published by Mental Disability Law Blog on January 25, 2008 (boomark / email).