This textbook is largely focused on people with mental disorders as they enter and proceed through the criminal justice system. In this chapter, we will consider a specific legal tool used to manage people with mental disorders outside of or adjacent to the criminal justice system: involuntary treatment, also known as commitment.

If you are familiar with the idea of civil commitment, you may know it as a process used to respond to a person who has become unsafe in the community due to an active mental disorder. Civil commitment allows a judge to order care and treatment for the person, and even confine them to a hospital to receive that care, without the person becoming involved in the criminal justice system. Because civil commitment is a restriction on freedom, it is used only in specific and limited circumstances, as you will learn about in this chapter.

There are also commitments that are closely connected to or part of the criminal justice system. These are sometimes referred to as criminal commitments because they are used to manage people who are already engaged in the criminal justice system. However, it is important to understand that these “criminal” commitments are not convictions, nor are they punishments.

In this chapter you will learn about these different varieties of commitment: what they are, how and when they are used, how they are obtained, and the issues that surround them.