People with mental disorders sometimes commit crimes, and are put in prison for it, with the justice system thinking serving jail time means you learn from your mistakes and keep the public away from danger. In some cases, prison isn't the right place to look towards for violent mental disorder victims. People have been debating on what punishment mentally ill people should get for committing crimes. Mentally ill people who have been convicted of crime should not be sentenced to jail, but instead be rehabilitated in special centres so they can become useful members of society again.
Mental illnesses take over people’s brains and alter stimuli and responses to daily situations, which means that they can be in very vulnerable situations sometimes.
“Severe mental illness like psychosis can lead to a tragedy like this - that people can see things that aren't real and hear things that aren't real and believe things that aren't real, and act in that distorted reality.” (Yates)
There comes a point where they can't differentiate between fact and fiction, so they start believing everything they see. What the justice system needs to understand is that they can't control their actions because of their mental state. Most people with mental disorders who committed crimes can't recall them in the first place.
Andrea Yates, a woman who drowned and killed all 5 of her children, unknowingly because she suffered from severe postpartum depression and psychosis. According to her husband, she recalled only a few parts of the day she killed her children. Her husband strongly believes even to this day that she wasn’t in her right mind when she did those horrible things to their children, and that she didn't know what was real and what wasn't’.
Putting mentally ill people in prison won't help any situation in any way. Prison is a place where fully aware people go to serve jail time. The people there know very well about the crime they have committed. Prisons are more likely to make mental illnesses worse than to help them recover and recuperate. Especially to a person suffering from bipolarism or severe depression, restrictive environments will just make their mental health worse. Everyone in prison is treated the same, doesn't matter how severe or small the crime was, they are all treated as criminals. To people who aren't aware of the harm they caused, prison will frustrate their senses, and cause their self worth to degrade over time, leading to worse psychological disorders.
“Both police officers and prison guards receive very little training with regards to interactions and managing individuals with mental illness.” (DeMoss, 2015)
The lack of training towards caring or interacting with mentally challenged people could show how even day to day interactions could harm them in unnoticed ways.
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center said that he thinks the situations mentally ill inmates are under are just plain inhumane. Prisons are not well equipped to treat and deal with mental disorders. Without the right medication and treatment facilities in prison, mentally ill people are simply bound to deteriorate.
What the victims of such mental disorders need are rehabilitation centres, where they can rest and recuperate. They need comfort and care, from skilled doctors who are trained to deal with their behaviours. The justice system sends people to jail so they can think about the mistakes they have made, and so they know what they have done is wrong. But for mentally challenged people, they don't know what they have done in the first place. And seeing people treat them like serial killers would frustrate them as it would to any other human.
“The goal of psychiatric rehabilitation is to help individuals with persistent and serious mental illness to develop the emotional, social and intellectual skills needed to live, learn and work in the community with the least amount of professional support”
With people around to take care of them, they can recover slowly with the right medication and treatment.
With enforcing a law like this in the justice system, there will be people trying to defy the system. There are bound to be people wanting to exploit the system by pleading not guilty by claiming to have a mental illness even if their mental health is perfect. To solve these problems, thorough psychological evaluations should be held to test the reliability of their assumption. Psychological evaluations are a way to determine a person’s mental health by testing on their personality and behaviour responding to certain situations. Psychological evaluations will ensure that criminals will not try to defy the justice system.
Mentally ill people think differently. In their minds, they are normal, and so being put away in prison will confuse and frustrate them further than they already are. Creating a law like this is the right way to proceed, by giving mentally ill people a chance to become a welcomed and useful part of our community and society again.
"Andrea Yates." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 12 June 2016.
"Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online."Mentally Ill Persons Who Commit Crimes: Punishment or Treatment?Web. 12 June 2016.
"Taking Back Control of Your Life."MentalHealthRecovery. 03 Oct. 2000. Web. 12 June 2016.
CNN. Cable News Network. Web. 12 June 2016.
DeMoss, Dustin. "The Nightmare of Prison for Individuals With Mental Illness." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com. Web. 12 June 2016.
"Andrea Yates." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 12 June 2016.
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