The collection of papers from Wilbur J. Cohen's Task Force on the Prevention and Investigation of Abuse in State Institutions are comprised of correspondence, testimonies, drafts and reports, state departmental documents, legal briefs, and press clippings. The bulk of these documents serve to provide insight into the Task Force's investigatory processes. In addition, the inclusion of early material serves to illustrate the impetus for its formation, while later material documents its after-effect.
The roughly chronological arrangement of the records provides a coherent history of the short-lived (March-July, 1978) Task Force. The first subseries, Pre-Task Force, contains material dating from 1977 through the early days of the Task Force. Included here are the Detroit Free Press articles concerning abuse at the Plymouth Center for Human Development. These articles set in motion the public demand for accountability in the abuse found at Plymouth. Governor Milliken's response is also found here, and his subsequent appointment of the Task Force. Other early documents are the two reports (Bishop and Davis), which offered preliminary information to the members of the Task Force.
The second subseries contains material created or gathered by the Task Force. The series includes meeting minutes, a plethora of solicited information from sources both inside and outside the state, and documents regarding the two special panels created out of the Task Force (i.e., Special Oakdale Review Panel, and Special Panel on Care in Nursing Homes, Homes for the Aged, and Adult Foster Care Facilities). Particularly poignant are the nine folders of correspondence and testimonies, written by current and former institutionalized citizens and their family members. This series also contains the drafts and reports of the Task Force and its special panels, including responses to these documents.
The Post-Task Force subseries contains several items postdating the Task Force's period of existence. Here are found "follow-up" documents from the Department of Mental Health and the Plymouth Center for Human Development, the draft of the "Hollister Bill", and the text of a presentation made by Wilbur J. Cohen before the Michigan Legislature. Also included is a copy of Gary Bass's PhD. dissertation (1979), for which Cohen was faculty advisor. Bass played an important role in the Task Force, particularly in his involvement with the Special Oakdale Review Panel; his dissertation contains loosely-veiled references to the findings of the Task Force.
The Miscellaneous subseries contains an exhaustive and informative "scrapbook" of original and photocopied newspaper articles. These press clippings document events at the Oakdale Center for Developmental Disabilities, from March through June, 1978, much of which implies the effect of the Task Force's Special Panel. The two folders containing press clippings on the Plymouth Center for Human Development cover the period of February through December, 1978. These articles includes references to the staffing upheaval at Plymouth, from the director on down to the caregivers, which resulted from the investigations of the Task Force and its precursor, the Davis Panel. The series also contains 20 audiocassette tapes of Task Force meetings.
