Although I guess it would make more sense to be looking at a chart of 2nd offences.
Someone locked up for insanity wouldn't be released while they are still a danger to the public. But anyone imprisoned for a violent crime might be released while still a very clear danger to society, even murderers and similar. Time limited sentences work that way.
I know of people on various medications for psychiatric reasons that have (against their doctor's recommendation) gone off their meds because they didn't like the side-effects. That might be fine (if unfortunate/difficult) for a mental illness that doesn't drive the sufferer to violence, but in the case where it does, how can you responsibly release someone if you don't have a mechanism to ensure they stay on their medication?
I think the actual 'enforcement' in the way you are thinking would be backed up with some kind of court ruling that they were required to take the medication, I'm not so sure how that angle would work.
They don't seem to work in that sense. There doesn't seem to have been a reduction in hospital use in that group.
English MH treatment is very different to the US though.
My understanding is that prisons are said to have four purposes: deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation.
However, in the absence of having prisons a society would likely create prisons to protect the people of society. My conclusion is that prisons are meant to protect the populace with those other reasons being secondary based upon cultural mores.
How would prisons protect people? By deterring the people who might endanger them, by removing the capacity of people who do cause harm to cause more harm, by punishing those people, and by rehabilitating them into society.
The reasons aren't secondary or primary. They're different sides of the same coin, just stated from different perspectives: how to deal with the problem of crime vs. how to protect society from criminals.
No, he's been given an 'absolute discharge'. There are no legal obligations for him.
Well, if he is considered sane by trustworthy professionals, then why not?
I can't see how it's different to live next to someone who is cured after 10 years of treatment, as opposed to say someone who was in prison for 10 years for the same crime (Where I live this would likely be considered more severe than the normal 12 years out after 9 though). Probably 18 or life, where "life" is often at least 18.
I'd prefer not to live next to that person, but there isn't really much I can do about living next to an ex convict, or in this case an ex- mental patient?
Psychology as a science is remarkable in its inability to make accurate predictions. I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate.
Now, this is a nearly non existent problem isn't it? For major crimes, being locked up in psychiatric care is a longer, or indefinite sentence, than would be served in prison (this varies between countries of course).
This guy was getting locked up no matter what. The only question was, was he getting locked up in a prison or in a psych ward? So do we trust psychiatry enough to say "lock him up here rather than there"? Sure.
Do we trust them enough to say "It's safe to release him now"? That's a harder question.
In the involuntary commitment case, is it reasonable to hold a person longer than what the equivalent prison sentence would be, even if the person is still considered mentally ill after the equivalent time?
In England a prisoner who becomes mentally ill and is sent to hospital will be kept in hospital until they are well. The legal powers to send them to hospital and keep them there are listed in the Mental Health Act. People are detained under section of the MHA - commonly known as sectioned.
When a prisoner detained under section is in hospital and their prison sentence ends their section is converted to a different one, which allows treatment to continue.
That's not true. Doctors didn't make a decision to lock up the individual.
It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured.
Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. Which is why this is such a small problem - people aren't often declared sane and released if they committed serious crimes.
> It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured.
No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same.
> No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same.
You said I was wrong, and then wrote text that supported my comment.
It doesn't matter if the evaluation is the same. The state of sanity differs from the state of insanity, yet not showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives.
> showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives.
Right. And a false positive might send someone to this facility instead of prison while a true negative might let someone out while dangerous.
I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate.
Similarly a DA only attempts to prove to a jury that a defendant is guilty and it us their job to argue as much.
If an expert witness claims something that is untrue he would be subject to perjury.
If we want to have concept like people being cured of medical conditions, then we must also accept that doctors will make imperfect distinction between healthy and sick.
The question society must make is how far we can accept that mistakes happen, and what safe guards we impose to handle the situations when someone fails.
Obviously if someone is found lying they should be held responsible - but the released person reoffending does not make the evaluation willfully dishonest.
If that became the case, no one would be released, ever.
For example, soldiers kill people, because it's "war" or they have "orders" or it's "the just way to deal with things".
If they'd kill the same person on the streets as a civilian, everyone would be disgusted and angry. Yet for it's former reason people feel the need to give medals and applaud.
You should think about this really hard for a second.
Our minds are not entirely our own, and simple cognitive pushes here and there can change our entire perspective just like that, while OBJECTIVELY it's still a dead human in this particular example.
With that said, one should not seek black and white answers in this concept. Mentall illnesses and for that matter the law system are dynamic and constantly in motion.
It's much harder to tell whether a person will offend again, and there are severe consequences if that person does offend again, so professionals are risk averse.
Right. But this often takes place several months or years after the crime was committed. So might still be difficult.
> It's much harder to tell whether a person will offend again, and there are severe consequences if that person does offend again
Yes, someone might get hurt. So yes, risk aversion involved. But also: there are severe consequences for the opposite too. Remember this is a person that is not guilty (responsible) for a crime, that is kept locked up.
There is science, and there is Science.
Now, this is obviously a hard and delicate problem when it comes to the releasing part of the equation.
But the argument that they are either incapable or untrustworthy to make the judgment doesn't fly - why were they capable and trustworthy when locking someone up then?
1) The person would have been locked up whether found sane or insane. The only different was location.
2) You are admitting facts not in evidence, when you assume that the doctors were capable and trustworthy when determining the insanity. There is science and there is Science.
Right. Which is why that decision is done with lower stakes. But
> You are admitting facts not in evidence, when you assume that the doctors were capable and trustworthy when determining the insanity.
All I'm saying is that regardless of how accurate and trustworthy they are, if we trust them do do A we better trust them when doing B, even if the stakes and risk of mistakes are higher.
I can't see any other solution, do you? The only theoretically possible solution would be to lock people up for life if found insane - but I don't think that's a viable approach.
Like, do people have free will while they are sleepwalking? Science doesn't have a good answer, but people have successfully been acquitted of crimes they claimed they committed while asleep. It's far easier to answer questions about free will when you think of it in legal terms, and it matches up pretty well with your intuitions about things.
“Free will” isn't something “science isn't sure even exists”, it is instead fundamentally incompatible with the model of reality which is required by science.
This is one of the biggest issues we have in this country, our prison system is used to make up for a lack of mental health care.
I'd not want more money than it costs for upkeep and I'll not be a physical caretaker - I don't wash asses. Still, I've got plenty to keep someone occupied and they'd have to be alone when I travel. I guess I'd want to be pretty selective, the person(s) would have to be interesting and intelligent.
I'm not sure if the missus would be happy about it, but she might be. She used to work with the mentally ill.
"... we have to be respectful of people who disagree with the decision on that basis, but recognize that we've made a decision as a civilized country that we don't punish people who really didn't know what they were doing at the time of the offence, and really didn't know that they were doing something wrong, and that's a very, very small subset of people..."
In the US, our insanity defense laws are setup to maintain the appearance that we are a civilized country during the court phase - and then after the case vanishes from the headlines, we become savages that lock these people in padded rooms, often until they die. Canada actually is a civilized country that is willing to abide by the spirit of such laws, even when the outcome is controversial.
I'm an American, but I find myself cringing more and more when I say that these days.
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/vince-li-discharge-1....
Manitoba, not Ontario. I remember my shock of this happening in Western Canada where I was at the time.
I would prefer to not live next to anyone who if they got the wrong medical condition, the wrong combination of drugs or medical procedure, or wrong parasite, could go on a rampage and kill someone. The question is if that is possible, or if its just part of human biology that medical with the wrong set of circumstances there will be a fringe possibility that people do things which they otherwise would not.
Perhaps there is a combined higher probability that one of your other neighbors will one day snap and go crazy than the medicated/or rehabilitated one doing so again. Unless you're not worried about that, but rather your "sensibilities are offended" by his action. Well, in that case, "the devil you know..."
Although there's some dissent, in law the typical expression you hear is the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law
A decade later, he's been released- under a lot of conditions and on a lot of medication, but people are very upset that he'd ever be free at all. In interviews, he's a very interesting person. "Regret" and "shame" aren't strong enough words.
It's a hard debate- if he was not guilty due to a medical condition, then he was not found guilty and shouldn't be in prison, certainly. But he did cut a guy's head off. Would you want to live next to the guy who did that while not in control of himself?
It's the extreme end of the situation, to be certain, but extremes are a great place to examine any system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean