Mentally Insane but Guilty
The New York State Senate today passed legislation (S.1822), sponsored by Senator Frank Padavan (R-C, Bellerose), that would allow juries to find defendants "guilty but mentally ill" in cases where they believe the defendant may have been mentally ill at the time of the crime, but should still be held responsible for his or her actions.
"The Andrea Yates case in Texas highlights the need for another option for jurors other than simply guilty or innocent. Often, juries are reluctant to find defendants 'not guilty by reason of mental illness,' because they are afraid those defendants will not be held responsible and will go free after only a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital," said Senator Padavan. "These men and women are found guilty and serve time in prison without receiving the psychiatric treatment they so desperately need."
A Texas jury last week found Andrea Yates guilty in the drowning deaths of her five children and recommended life in prison, rather than the death penalty. Jurors said they believed that Yates was mentally ill, but that she knew the difference between right and wrong.
"By creating a verdict of 'guilty but mentally ill,' a jury would be able to establish that a defendant's mental illness is great enough to require treatment, but not so great as to relieve him or her of guilt for a crime," said Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno. "This will keep dangerous criminals, like Albert Fentress, off the streets, while giving people with real mental defects the treatment they deserve."
Albert Fentress, who spent the last 20 years in a psychiatric institution after torturing, sexually assaulting, killing and cannibalizing a Poughkeepsie teenager, recently petitioned the court...
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...inal justice system. We need ATI and enhanced community mental health programs that can accommodate people with mental illness diverted from the criminal justice system. We need discharge planning for all jail and prison inmates with mental illness and programs that will assist people as they return to the community.
People with mental illness caught up in the criminal justice system are part of our communities. Our present system is failing to retrieve these many desperate lives and failing equally to spend available money judiciously. Decency and fiscal responsibility call for the changes outlined here. New York City and State could become leaders in addressing this growing national problem and assisting society's most vulnerable citizens. It is our hope that this report and these recommendations will persuade policymakers to follow this sensible and humane path
Rock, M. (2001). Emerging issues with mentally ill offenders: Casues and social consequences. Administration and Policy in Mental Health., 165-180.
Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their misunderstood behavior not being considered a normality in society. In this report I will go into detail of what mental health and mental illness is, what the differentiates a normal and a mentally unstable criminal, give examples of criminal cases where the defendant’s state of mind was brought up, introduce theories surrounding why one would commit crimes due to their mental health, and lastly I will discuss how the criminal justice system has been modified to accommodate mental health issues.
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
Interest and debate have greatly increased over the Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) plea since the 1970s. The legal definition of insanity as understood by Dunn, Cowan, and Downs (2006) is, “a person is thought insane if he or she is incapable of knowing or understanding the nature and quality of his or her act of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the commission of the offense.” There are several investigations needed in the area of NGRIs plea, especially in the area of gender. Research on gender is needed because of its potential to influence the presentation and formation of the rule of law. Throughout many cultures the general assumption is that men are significantly more aggressive than women, whereas women often are characterized by passive and communal traits (Yourstone, 2007 ). Public opinion on insanity cases is often viewed negatively. Furthermore, the public often believe that insanity defendants go free after they are found NGRI. However, according to Dunn et al., (2006), “the NGRI sits at the low end of the ultimate outcome measure, whereas the death penalty sits at the high end.” The public in general view a mentally ill person as dangerous. The main reason for this is the media’s inaccurate perceptions of the mentally ill as violent (Breheney, 2007). Another problem is the public generally overestimates the insanity defense success rate. According to Breheney et al., (2007), “There are nine insanity pleas for every 1,000 felony cases of which 26% (about two) are successful.” However, the argument has been that insanity defenses are used as a means of escaping severe penalties in the most serious of crimes. Several questions arise from this topic in both psychology and law. It is important f...
States obtain many services that fall under mental health care, and that treat the mentally ill population. These range from acute and long-term hospital treatment, to supportive housing. Other effective services utilized include crisis intervention teams, case management, Assertive Community Treatment programs, clinic services, and access to psychiatric medications (Honberg at al. 6). These services support the growing population of people living in the...
Until the middle of the last century, public mental health in the United States had been the responsibility, for the most part, of individual states, who chose to deal with their most profoundly mentally-ill by housing them safely and with almost total asylum in large state mental hospitals. Free of the stresses we all face in our lives, the mentally-ill faced much better prospects for peaceful lives and even recovery than they would in their conditions in ordinary society. In the hospitals, doctors were always accessible for help, patients were assured food and care, and they could be monitored to insure they never became a danger to themselves or others. Our nation’s state hospital system was a stable, efficient way to help improve the lives of our mentally disabled.
...t of people who return back to a law breaking mentality after they get released from prison. When you release people instead use these alternatives versus confinement it is less of a waste of expensive resources, taxpayer’s money, as well as time. A medium between control and treatment needs to be met in all of the prisons, or jails. Some men or women need more strict conditions and supervision practices while others may just need more of the services that should be offered such as rehabilitation, and alcohol or drug prevention. Any of these options will not be easy nor diminish this overcrowding issue quickly. It will take time, patience, and cooperation with both the inmates or ex-offenders family, friends, courts as well as law enforcement and jails.
Wouldn’t it be completely irrational to sentence every mentally ill individual to jail purely because they suffered from a mental illness? Often, mentally ill people behave in an eccentric manner and allure the attention of police officers who do not differentiate the mentally ill from mentally stable people and immediately charge them with misdemeanors. There are approximately 300,000 inmates, with the number increasing every year, which suffer from a mental illness and do not receive proper treatment. Jails are not adequately equipped to care for mentally ill inmates, which can lead to an escalation of an inmate’s illness. Society has failed to provide enough social resources for citizens suffering from psychiatric illnesses in its community, transferring mentally unstable individuals between mental institutions and jails, when in fact adequate aid such as providing proper medication, rehabilitation opportunities, and more psychiatric hospitals in communities is a necessity to reconstitute these individuals.
Every year, nonviolent people are incarcerated for crimes that do not threaten the safety of others only because they have a mental illness. Because of this, 25-30% of inmates are mentally ill (McClealland 16). To prevent this, most jurisdictions have at least one criterion that is reflected on whether or not a person is posing a danger to themselves or others. Some other criteria which can also be connected to a danger such as a disability or inability to provide for one's basic human needs or that some treatment would be crucial for ones wells being. But being committed requires proof that hospitalizing the patient will be the least restrictive in addition to showing a sign of being dangerous ("Commitment." 26). Court stated that involuntary commitment procedures restrict a harmless person to live safely outside an institution despite the fact that they are mentally ill ("Commitment." 27). Polly Jackson Spencer, Bexar County Judge states, “We don't want to send people to jail if they are not a threat to society” (Dayak, Meena, and Gonzales 24). Forcing harmless individuals into jail will not help their illness. In fact, it will only worsen it. Jails are incapable of handling unstable individuals. Because of their incompetence to help inmates, there is a high number of mentally ill being beaten, mistreated, and killed by guards, or ultimately killing themselves (McClealland 16). Many jails don't even test their incoming inmates for any mental illn...
Prior to taking this course, I generally believed that people were rightly in prison due to their actions. Now, I have become aware of the discrepancies and flaws within the Criminal Justice system. One of the biggest discrepancies aside from the imprisonment rate between black and white men, is mental illness. Something I wished we covered more in class. The conversation about mental illness is one that we are just recently beginning to have. For quite a while, mental illness was not something people talked about publicly. This conversation has a shorter history in American prisons. Throughout the semester I have read articles regarding the Criminal Justice system and mental illness in the United States. Below I will attempt to describe how the Criminal Justice system fails when they are encountered by people with mental illnesses.
The issue of executing mentally ill criminals has been widely debated among the public. They debate on whether it is right or wrong to execute a person who does not possess the capacity to think correctly. The mental illness is a disease that destroys a person’s memory, emotion, and prevent one or more function of the mind running properly. The disease affects the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and relates to others.When a person is severely mentally ill, his/ her ability to appreciate reality lack so they aspire to do stuff that is meaningless. The sickness is triggered by an amalgamation of genetic, and environmental factors not a personal imperfection. On the death penalty website, Scott Panetti who killed his mother in-law and father-in-law reports that since 1983, over 60 people with mental illness or retardation have been executed in the United States (Panetti). The American Civil Liberties Union says that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who suffered from an earnest mental illness (ACLU).Some people apply the term crazy or mad to describe a person who suffers from astringent psychological disorders because a mad person look different than a mundane human being. The time has come for us to accept the fact that executing mentally ill offenders is not beneficial to society for many reasons. Although some mentally ill criminals have violated the law, we need to sustain a federal law that mentally ill criminals should not be put to death.
...lo, Kellen. "Treating Mental Health Issues Can Help Justice System." U-T San Diego: Web Edition Articles 6 Mar. 2014: n. pag. NewsBank Special Reports. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
Seltzer, T., 2005, ‘Mental health courts – A misguided attempt to address the criminal justice system’s unfair treatment of people with mental illnesses’, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 570-586.
Several states authorize police officers to arrest mentally ill people who have not broken any law. It is argued that this process is a way to promote public order. Hospitals also transfer mentally ill patients to jail in order to deal with the overflow. It is not uncommon for children to be confined to criminal detention centers because there is a lack of facilities for severely mentally ill children. Relying on the criminal justice systems to be surrogate mental health systems conflicts with the basic notions of justice. (Aufderheide,
It is apparent that insanity, automatism and diminished responsibility share similarities and differences in their range of application and in definition. Insanity and automatism are most similar in that they both are full defences (with different outcomes) which exist when a defendant does not have the necessary actus reus or mens rea, whereas diminished responsibility is a partial defence which only applies to murder. The source of the defendant’s mental abnormality is the greatest point of distinction between all of the defences. Whether the abnormality is internal, external or a diagnosed medical condition will play a significant role in which defence can be used. As defences they are all used for a similar reason, and that is to eliminate or reduce liability for criminal offences.