Psychopathy, Dangerousness and Involuntary Detention in New Zealand: Fitness for Release from Compulsory Treatment Status

Significant political pressures apply to determinations for release of persons from involuntary psychiatric detention who suffer personality disorders rather than traditionally acknowledged psychiatric illnesses, and who have previously been responsible for significant criminal offences. Such debates are current in the United Kingdom; they generated considerable community controversy in Victoria, Australia, in relation to Garry David in the early 1990s; and they have been raised starkly by the Mental Health Review Tribunal, High Court and Court of Appeal decisions in New Zealand in relation to RCH. This article analyses the RCH controversy and explores the circumstances in New Zealand in which persons who are not mentally disordered can be involuntarily detained where they are clinically considered to pose a threat to the safety of the general community if released from civil commitment status.