Rättssäkerhet och tvångsvård : En rättssociologisk studie

Sammanfattning: Compulsory treatment and care is regulated by the Care of Alcoholics and Drug abusers Act (Lag (1988:870) om vård av missbrukare i vissa fall, LVM). The regulation's main purpose is to motivate persons with addictive problems to voluntarily participate in the treatment of their problems. The compulsory care shall continue for a maximum period of six months in special treatment centres (the so-called LVM-homes), in which the treatment-staff have been given special powers to not only impose reasonable and rigorous restrictions on the freedom of movement and the integrity of the inmates, (cf. 31- 36 § § LVM), but also, make other important decisions with respect to the integrity and the personal circumstances of the inmates during and after the period of the compulsory care. This dissertation has an overall aim to study how legal security is apprehended and expressed in the decision-making processes of the LVM-homes and the author takes, as an initial point of departure, research results in jurisprudence pertaining to the concept of legal security and its different definitions. Through this starting point, it is possible to perceive the traditional meaning of the concept, as to how such traditional perceptions can be progressively developed from specific needs and prerequisites descending from an organisational sector. In this case the National Board of Institutional Care, (Statens institutionsstyrelse, SiS). This new definition of legal security is an agglomeration that comprises different jurisprudential considerations as well as the more specialized information extracted from representatives of the concerned system and their expressed opinions on legal security. It takes formal as well as material considerations. Subsequently, the constructed concept became the research tool that was used during the empirical studies phase of this dissertation, whereupon it became possible to study how legal security is maintained for the inmates of the LVM-homes. The idea being also that the staff members who perform the practical care and treatment assignments would find such a concept sustainable and through which they will hopefully find ways to uphold legal security in their daily activities. In order to collect material which can complement each other during the result-compilation phase, several methods were used in three different partial studies. In the first partial study relevant legal security policy documents produced by the SiS central organization as well as the local regulations produced by different LVM-homes were studied. The second partial study consists of a questionnaire-survey of some selected staff-members from LVM-homes. The last empirical study consists of interviews with two different groups of staff-members. The results show a relatively fractured picture with respect to the maintenance of legal security values in the LVM-homes. A majority of the respondents are of the opinion that the individual-oriented aspects of integrity and proportion must always be taken into account before and during the decision-making process, at the same time as the decision-makers re-create more of such rules, which in practice appear to have extensive difficulties of being maintained and handle such aspects or adjustments in a much secure way.