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Two Cheers for Laura's Law

By Jonathan Simor

Kevin Fagan reports on the emerging debate about Laura's Law in California on the front page of today's SFChron. Laura's Law was adopted legislatively in 2003, named after Laura Wilcox, a Nevada county woman shot by a man with untreated mental illness. The law creates "assisted outpatient treatment" as a new alternative to civil commitment in California. Behind the law's enactment, as Fagan sketches, has been two disturbing features of contemporary California life; our grossly expanded prison system that held fewer than 30,000 prisoners in the early 1970s (when the state's landmark Lanterman Petris Short civil commitment reform law went into effect) to over 170,000 today. The fact that at least 15% (and perhaps many more) of these prisoners are suffering from a major mental illness is acknowledged by all...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).