CARGOCULTISM OF PSYCHIATRIC CARE IN CUSTODY

The aim: To analyze the features of the realization mechanism of the persons' rights who have become ill with a mental illness and are in the detention of adequate (equivalent) medical care.

Materials and methods: A set of general and special methods of scientific knowledge were used. The study's empirical basis consists of international acts and standards in the field of health care, statistics of the United Kingdom, France, the United States, some countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, reports of international organizations, the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. The study also used the personal experience of one of the co-authors as a lawyer for more than 20 years and 4 years as a judge of the Supreme Court.

Results: The conducted research gives grounds to state that for the last few decades the problem of receiving psychiatric care in conditions of imprisonment remains relevant. This situation is partly due to the fact that the certain standards' content is subject to clarification, as it is contained in optional international instruments or is given some understanding solely through the practice of the ECHR. Given the implementation of the prisoners' right of access to psychiatric care is entrusted primarily to penitentiary institution's administration, attention should be paid to methodological, material, and staffing of their work while introducing maximum openness of psychiatric care's algorithms to prisoners and facilitating access to legal aid for the mentally ill.

Conclusions: Creating external attributes of mechanisms to ensure the convicts' right to psychiatric care, the relevant national mechanisms do not take into account the specifics of the detained persons' legal status. Such a superficial imitation of the system of guarantees of the prisoners' rights to medical care is a kind of cargo cultism of public institutions, which is designed to provide non-discriminatory conditions for the realization of the right to health care for all categories of the population.