Nurses and the Discursive Construction of Procedural Justice in Review Board Hearings

There has been growing interest about procedural justice in mental health tribunals. A process considered procedurally just increases adherence to treatment, increases compliance with judicial decisions and allows efficient community reintegration. Yet, little is known about how procedural justice is carried out and the role of professionals in its implementation. Stemming from the results of a critical ethnography of the Ontario Review Board, in this article we examine how procedural justice materializes during Review Board hearings and the role of nurses in this materialization. We do so by leveraging Goffman’s work on total institutions and institutional ceremonies. Our findings suggest that nurses participate in activities that provide a perception of procedural justice, rather than serve their patients’ right to true procedural justice. We conclude by recommending that nurses engage in reflections about the distal effects of their clinical practice to broaden the possibilities for resistance within the forensic psychiatric system.