Editor’s Note: An article published April 8 briefly outlined what would have happened to Kofi Adu-Brempong had he been submitted under the Baker Act. This article offers further clarification about what this law entails.
Every four and a half minutes, one person in Florida is submitted under the Baker Act.
The act gives law enforcement personnel, judges and mental health professionals the ability to send mental patients to hospitals and clinics against their will for the purpose of decreasing their chances of being taken to jail.
Kofi Adu-Brempong, the 35-year-old Ghanan graduate student who was shot and arrested in his apartment last month, was not submitted under the Baker Act.
The law states that people may be involuntarily submitted under the Baker Act if there is reason to believe they are mentally ill and are likely to either suffer neglect or cause harm to themselves or others.
“The whole point of the Baker Act is to protect the vulnerable,” said Bruce Stevens, co-president of the local National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter and a professor in the UF College of Medicine.
The submitter does not necessarily have to witness the patient’s behavior but must have a “reason to believe” that harm will result if nothing is done.
This reason may be based upon the sworn testimony of a patient’s friends or family members.
The Baker Act states that a patient should be taken to the nearest approved hospital or clinic, and he or she should be examined by a physician or clinical physiologist.
Treatments may or may not be given, yet the patient may not leave the facility before the 72-hour deadline without written permission of an attending doctor.
Under ideal circumstances, the Baker Act states that constitutional rights of mental patients should be maintained, though that can often be difficult.
“The Baker Act shouldn’t be taken lightly,” Stevens said. “You take their rights away.”
In 2006, 121,551 people were involuntarily submitted under the act, according to the Florida Mental Health Act 2006 report, which is the most recent report available.
In Alachua County, 2,359 people were submitted under the Baker Act in 2006 and sent to one of the county’s two Baker-Act-approved facilities.
