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I'm trying to make a place that is a part of a nation but not under its government's rule, specifically a mental institution. It has dark secrets within its walls.
I want to write a mystery story which contains lots of dark themes, and a detective needed to find out the mystery behind it without the help of the government.
However, I'm not sure how I can keep the mental institution running if it's violating the laws of the government.
Related to sovereignty and treaties:
“Federal, state or local officers or officials of the United States, whether administrative, judicial, military or police, shall not enter the headquarters district to perform any official duties therein except with the consent of and under conditions agreed to by the Secretary-General.” (Section 9).
Related to administrative districts:
Unusual cities:
Anomalies:
“This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity’s jurisdiction.”
Just make it a religious institute. There are plenty of examples in real life that "what happens in a religious institute stays in the religious institute", not even mentioning that in the past churches were granted the privilege of being extra territorial places.
Exclave
An exclave is a spot which is officially a part of a country with which it is not contiguous. Kaliningrad is an example that has been in the news lately. It is a little piece of Russia surrounded by Poland and Lithuania. Life there depends on the relationship between those countries and Russia.
Your mental hospital is in an exclave. For historical reasons it is part of a different, powerful but fairly distant country. The borders of the exclave are formally international borders though perhaps more is made of this for some than for others.
I envision your exclave as even smaller than Kaliningrad. They are governed by their own laws and by those of the distant parent country. The national law enforcement of that parent country does not often come to the exclave to make sure things are in order.
A functioning state means there is a government to exercise sovereignty over the territory. There area legal system and police who claim a monopoly on legitimate violence. The flip side of this monopoly is that they must exercise it on behalf of citizens who have been wronged.
But a democracy also respects the rights of their citizens, including privacy. The only time I've seen on-duty police in my home was when I reported a bicycle theft from my back yard. They don't drop in for random checks where I live ...
This principle can become turning a blind eye, as when the Catholic Church got away with investigating and obfuscsating sexual abuse by themselves. Or when various churches decided to offer sanctuary to refugees who were to be deported. What these cases have in common is that the government refrained from enforcing laws for fear of public backlash. The church has a good reputation with people who normally back the state institutions, and so the government agencies simply find other crimes to investigate before they open that file.
A different mechanism applies when there are people who normally hate the state institutions, and if the government agencies decide to pick their fights carefully. Some time ago, in Berlin, squatters were evicted from an occupied building. The police deployed roughly 30 officers per squatter, because they expected violent protests by part of the community. This action was planned and authorized by senior police and political leaders with a significant lead time, while a normal eviction involves one bailiff, perhaps one patrol car, and possibly a few hired movers. A critic might say that the squatters got away with defying court orders far longer than an ordinary eviction case, because of government fear.
Your mental institution would probably use the first option.
I would suggest a very remote location. Perhaps somewhere in a very high mountainous area with a very high pass on the border between two countries that used to be of strategic importance. Perhaps a large fortress was built there and extended and enlarged over the years.
Then eventually a better route was found through the mountains - a tunnel perhaps or maybe tensions eased between the two countries border or a huge landslide made access to the fortress very difficult or allowed a different route further away.
The fortress fell into disuse for sometime but eventually was taken over by monks and then in the fullness of time became a mental institution. The remoteness makes control and oversight difficult from central government so the institution is left alone. It is also in a semi-autonomous / demilitarized border region making it even less easy for government oversight.
Technically any oversight is via a commission set up for the semi-autonomous border region, but that has been under funded and only really exists on paper. So there is no effective oversight and nobody lives anywhere near it. It has a front that shows it's an austere but well run institution. Government is lax and only too happy to keep the status quo and also get rid of some very troublesome mental patients.
The few comments or complaints that do arise are directed to the semi-autonomous border regions joint administrators (for all the good that will do anyone).
This has happened before. The first example that springs to mind is Kowloon Walled City (demolished in 1994). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City
Hong Kong simply left it to run itself as it would have been very costly in both lives and money to properly control.
There are quite a few examples of real-world autonomies to a different degree, sometimes for quite a while (e.g. centuries):
The stability criteria is some combination of:
It's in an area claimed by no state, like Bir Tawil. Bir Tawil is an area that is, due to funky border disputes, claimed by neither Egypt nor Sudan (in fact, they each claim the other country owns it). Real life is sometimes weirder than fiction.
There aren't many other real life examples of this, but a few exist, see terra nullius.
There's still a few unclaimed areas in the world. In particular, there is an area called Liberland / Gornja Siga between Serbia and Croatia that both countries disavow owning. They both want to claim a bigger piece next to it and there is some history meaning that one nation has to get one piece and the other nation gets the other; they both claim the big piece and reject the small one, which is Liberland.
In practice, no one can get in and out because the Croatian military keeps it ringed with troops, but it wouldn't be hard for an author to imagine Croatia allowing an asylum there and then pretending it doesn't exist.
There are a few other debated terra nullius's around but mostly in the third world, and I assume your setting is in a developed country.
Apartheid
There exists a race or class of people who are legally considered lower-class citizens in this country.
The institution was built, and the doctors hired some time ago by a well-meaning wealthy philanthropist, in order to treat the mental health of people from this group. However, over time the philanthropist either lost interest, died, found out it was more difficult than they anticipated and lost control of the place. The place is now run entirely by people from this lower class, and due to government neglect, the area in which it was built has fallen to ruin. But it's the only hospital that will treat these people.
Them not being considered full legal citizens of the country, the government feels no obligation (or indeed might have convinced themselves they don't even have the right) to get involved in the running of the place. But the people who are supposed to be in charge - because they have not been allowed to have a proper education - can do little more than make sure the place stays in service, or are perhaps corrupt themselves.
