This time the government will not be able to discard. He will have to include in law before the end of the year the systematic control by the judicial judge of the measures for maintaining a patient in isolation or under restraint in a psychiatric hospital beyond a certain period. The Constitutional Council, which sharply censored, Friday, June 4, a very fresh legislative provision introduced by the government in December, chose to leave it a little more than six months for this important reform.
According to the Prime Minister’s services, 121,000 solitary confinement prescriptions and 33,000 restraint prescriptions were issued in 2018 by psychiatrists to people hospitalized without consent. A first priority question of constitutionality (QPC) had been raised just a year ago on this subject by patients defended by Raphaël Mayet, joined by associations including the Circle of reflection and proposal of actions on psychiatry or Lawyers. , rights and psychiatry.
The institution chaired by Laurent Fabius then, in a decision of June 19, 2020, censored the 2016 law organizing this type of measures in principle decided by medical teams as a last resort. For the guardians of the Constitution, and in particular of its article 66 according to which “No one can be arbitrarily detained”, isolation measures (confinement in a room) and restraint (drug or mechanical immobilization) “Constitute a deprivation of liberty”. Consequently, there is no question of maintaining them without a control by the judicial judge, guardian of individual freedom.
Outstanding establishments
The government had until December 31 to comply with this decision. The ministries of health and justice took care of it by means of an article slipped into the law, without much relation, of December 14, 2020 for the financing of Social Security for 2021. It is this provision that has is the subject of a new QPC, this procedure allowing any citizen to verify the constitutionality of a legislative provision which is opposed to it.
“The judicial judge’s obligation to intervene has not been put into practice”, denounced Me Mayet at the May 25 hearing before the Constitutional Council. In fact, beyond the legal limit of forty-eight hours for isolation and twenty-four hours for restraint, the censored law provides that these measures can be renewed. ” exceptionally “, on the condition of “The doctor immediately informs the judge of freedoms and detention [JLD], which can be seized ex officio ”. The judge can then decide to release the measure. “Information is not intervention”, disputed the lawyer, stressing that the right also granted to the patient to seize himself the judge is illusory. “It is difficult to see how a person in solitary confinement or under restraint could approach the JLD! “
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