Criminalizing the Emergency Room
Channel: HMS Center for Bioethics
Date: 2022-03-25

For the poor, mentally ill, uninsured, homeless, and racial minorities, emergency rooms play a crucial “safety net” function. Yet even though the ER receives people at particularly vulnerable moments, courts do not sufficiently protect patients who come under law enforcement scrutiny. In this talk, Professor Song describes how courts have viewed policing in the emergency room as an extension of street policing. In doing so, courts ignore the medical vulnerability of patients and undervalue medical professionals’ duties to patients. As a result, a space where medical professionals are tasked to heal injured and sick people has become a site for policing and surveillance. 

Presented by:
Ji Seon Song, JD, LLM

Moderated by:
Michele Bratcher Goodwin, SJD, LLM

This session is part of the Contemporary Issues in Health, Law, and Bioethics series.  Learn more at https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/events/public-bioethics-forums-0