Obstacles to Rehabilitation & Release

Rushville claims to offer state-of-the-art, evidence-backed treatment intended to cure and reintegrate residents into civil life. Resident letters, pamphlets, and article clippings that diagnose Rushville’s failure to make good on these promises comprise Obstacles to Rehabilitation & Release. Residents relate the fact of indefinite commitment to several interrelated factors. 

Residents argue psychological treatment provided at Rushville is misguided and ineffective. Some contest the state’s assertion that all or even most residents have specific mental disorders, like sadistic paraphilia, that make them sexually violent and unable to control sexual impulses. Residents estimate that in actuality, a small proportion of residents have psychiatric disorders, whereas most residents committed harm not due to a dangerous psychiatric disorder, but other circumstances, often linked to being survivors of abuse themselves. A collection of articles circulated among residents and included in the archive forcefully argue what many of the other exhibition materials indicate: civil commitment’s medical terms and assessment tools are poorly defined, subjective, lack scientific support, and are often misinterpreted by courts and clinicians, making it nearly impossible for residents to achieve release. Without a firm medical basis for civil commitment, the process is subject to bias. One resident estimates that 85% of Rushville’s population is LGBTQ, a gross overrepresentation. 

Residents also report that treatment progress is often held up as punishment, retribution, coercion, or from outside social/political pressures. As one resident comments—in the margins of a court judgment on his Fourteenth Amendment complaint—the law is set up to prevent residents from acquiring second opinions that would challenge and expand accountability to Rushville’s medical authority. Residents further point out that the state and Liberty Healthcare Corporation have little motive to fix such obstacles to release. One resident writes in the resident newsletter that Liberty’s psychological treatment is “nothing more than a thinly veiled justification to keep us locked up as long as possible, preferably, until we die.” To this end, a resident pamphlet, “Fundamentals of Sustained Oppression for Profit,” critiques the vested political and financial interests the state and corporations have in impeding resident release. It breaks down techniques staff members and clinicians use to “sustain oppression,” i.e. keep residents profitably locked away. 

Finally, exhibition documents critique a system that makes it challenging to find legal representation. One resident provided several rejection letters from law offices for archiving, writing on one of them, “When no one will help, how are we not supposed to feel hopeless and give up?”

For further context, see our guide to the coercive pseudoscientific practices in civil commitment.