The suggestions I offered in the "Indigenous Paraprofessional and Involuntary Civil Commitment: A Return to Community Values" (Bagby, 1984), for the reform of existing civil commitment laws are, clearly, "liberal," in so much as the intention was to curtail the medical prerogative in civil commitment procedures. Based on this proposal Page seems to have made the assumption that if I espoused such a reform I must be, naturally, politically liberal, which I am. Page errs, however, when he states that my policy suggestions rest on the belief that the community is also liberal and as such will exert a ' 'liberalizing influence upon the social control and 'person-blaming' aspects of establishment psychiatry." I made no such assumption, however, I did indicate that the layperson may, in fact, have a potentially "corrective" influence in the accurate prediction of dangerous behaviour in civil commitment procedures. Although my proposal for using indigenous paraprofessionals represents a liberalization of commitment law, it does not infer necessarily that the community will be liberal. I was arguing for a representative community voice, not a liberal one. Page seems to have "projected" his perception of my politics onto my hypothetical community laypersons. Hence, "misattributions about communities made by Bagby" are derived from the misrepresentations of Page. In light of the fact that Page's criticisms of my proposed model are based on an erroneous assumption, it is difficult to respond directly to many of his points. Nevertheless, Page raises a number of interesting issues which do merit comment and a brief restatement of my policy suggestions and their rationale.Central to my position in the advocation of laypersons in civil commitment proceedings is the status of psychiatrists as expert witnesses in dealing with issues of mental illness in the legal setting. la Jenkins v. United States (1962) a landmark decision was handed down in determining whether or not an individual qualified as an expert witness in a case involving mental illness. Writing for the majority Judge Bazelon held that the proper test for the admission of expert testimony was "whether the opinion offered will be likely to aid the trier in the search for truth," and that the determination of expertness depends "upon the nature and the extent of his (sic)The author would like to thank the Union College students enrolled in the Spring, 1987 Law and Psychology seminar for their suggestions. Many of the ideas contributed significantly to this essay.
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