Will it be different this time? Deinstitutionalization’s Past: A Reason to Pause and Reconsider

by VOR, June 2014

In a frank and challenging article, “The Past and Future of Deinstitutionalization Litigation,”    Samuel Bagenstos,  former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and a key litigator in deinstitutionalization cases, disputes the generally-accepted view that deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was a failure, admits that political expediency denied many people with mental illness and intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) quality placements in the community, and calls for the creation of a new political alliance to achieve quality community placements.