Jan Brakel, JD

Bio

Jan Brakel, JD , received his JD from the University of Chicago in 1968. He was a senior research fellow with the American Bar Foundation for 20 years and has held executive positions at the Isaac Ray Center and the Isaac Ray Forensic Group, institutes for the forensic practice of psychiatry and psychology, respectively. He has taught at DePaul University College of Law where he was assistant director of its Mental Health Law Institute and adjunct professor of law. He has also taught mental health law courses to a generation of psychiatry and psychology fellows at the Isaac Ray groups and at Cook County Jail, and is currently among the faculty teaching legal didactics to fellows of Northwestern Medical School’s forensic psychiatry program. Mr. Brakel is the author/editor of two volumes (1971 and 1985) of the American Bar Foundation’s The Mentally Disabled and the Law, a compendium and analysis of the mental health laws of each of the 50 states. He is co-author, with the late Professor Alexander Brooks, of the textbook, Law and Psychiatry in the Criminal Justice System, and has published multiple articles in law reviews and interdisciplinary journals on subjects ranging from mental patients’ right to refuse treatment to sex offender commitment laws.

He has also published extensively on correctional law and practices, tort reform, and methods of delivering legal aid to low-income people. His aspiration continues to be to teach a new generation of forensically inclined mental health professionals and to publish, whether with new or established practitioners of the craft, writings on such topics or issues that may confront them.