The use of drugs, usually powerful antipsychotics such as Thorazine and Stelazine, to keep patients, prisoners and other persons under care in a docile and manageable state. Manacles or leg irons are unnecessary when patients are unable to string one thought after another and are drooling on their slippers.

Supposedly more humane than physical restraints, until you consider the long-term consequences of the drugs on the patients, and their inevitable side effects. Jailors do not take an oath to Do No Harm.