Re:What happens after a defendant is found not guilty by rea...
by kelnos on Wednesday September 27, 2017 @06:00PM
(#15352724)
An interesting point (raised by the article) is the term of imprisonment. If he hadn't gotten NGRI, but had gone to jail, and it wasn't a life-without-parole sentence, he would have been released eventually.
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?
Re:What happens after a defendant is found not guilty by rea...
by DanBC on Thursday September 28, 2017 @04:19AM
(#15355605)
> 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.
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.