mentally ill

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In the United States the society as a whole has adopted a sense of “justice” and incarcerating people, and punishing crimes. Although the system of justice may be effective in some ways it is not always perfect. Mens Rea is the main and most important element in crime for which people are punished for. Mens Rea is the level of culpability of someone who committed a crime; it’s the level of mental awareness of the person when committing the crime.
There is four different levels for which we punish people in the mens rea aspect and which should be specified and written in the laws of different crimes. The first and highest level is intentional or purposeful which usually is specified in the law as “with intent to”, the second level is knowing and is applied when no other level is mentioned, third level is reckless and this would be a person who is aware of the risks of the crime and regardless of the risk still commit the crime. Last and fourth level of mens rea would be negligence which is failing to act or do something to prevent the crime or failed to do something that lead to the crime to happen.
All four levels of mens rea are directly connected to how we punish people because this is what the system looks for in a person who had committed a crime, what were they thinking? Did the intentionally did it? And so on. Mens rea in great majority gives punishment some purpose, some legal reason as of why we are punishing and rationalizing the time that would be served and so on, all depends on the level of thought of the person. In America people have this idea of not punishing criminals for their state of mind but for their acts, but what the system really does is punish people by the level of Mens Rea or thought. Punishing peo...

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...ted in the video, most of them because of the limited resources and beds they are not able to hold the mentally ill for long, they have a limited amount of time to be there and released back on their own to society where they are most likely to end up homeless. These people have little support not only form their families if any, but from the system itself. Prison is used a mental health institution and this is not the answer, most of these people do not understand their actions as been bad or some of them do but is all a product of their paranoia or whatever the case may be of the illness and so they shouldn’t be punish when the punishment is not going to solve their mental situation. In most of the cases these guys were apprehended and released over 20 times and are just a repeated cycle that could be avoided if help and more institutions were provided for them.

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