Profiling and judicial violence: Civil and administrative mental health multi-judicialization at the intersection of class, gender and race

Judicial procedures for involuntary admission and forced psychiatric treatment have been on the rise over the past 15 years in Quebec, as well as across Global North countries. Research reveals that these judicial practices tend to target marginalized social groups and are characterized by the violation of their judicial and civil rights. Judicial ethnographies have highlighted the multijudicialization of individuals subject to such procedures, in the mental health area, as well as in others such as criminal law and youth protection. These ethnographies also documented the content of court proceedings, which were focused on the socio-economic conditions of the involved individuals, rather than on the law. Based on these inductively analyzed ethnographic fields, this article describes how, in the context of social distance between judges and defendants, civil and administrative justice in the mental health area is exercised on the basis of an indefinite risk deeply rooted in a stereotyped conception of gender and race.