The text applies developments in critical social theory and proceeds from the assumption that confinement laws exist in a historical and legal context rooted in a particular ideological perspective. The discussion also focuses on the nature and roles of medicolegal language, discourse, and case and statutory law in discussions and decision-making regarding civil and criminal institutionalization. The text blends contributions from sociology, philosophy, psychiatry, law, and criminology to critique current approaches to issues involving mental illness, involuntary hospitalization, and incarceration. It examines legal language and argues that metaphors in the law, borrowed largely from the domain of psychiatry, have fashioned a criminal and civil confinement system that has effectively abandoned mental health consumers. It also recommends the use a non-oppressive, non-alienating linguistic system can be produced that disrupts the metaphors of the law and affirms the dignity of differently abled citizens. The final chapter examines the future of confinement law, policy, and practice; considers the viability of institutionalization for people with mental disorders; and poses alternative strategies more consonant with the politics of difference. Figures, index, and approximately 600 references