Re-entry of the criminally insane into society

Criminally Insane

Proper Housing and Treatment for the Criminally Insane

There is no one source for criminal behavior. The motives which drive individuals to engage in dangerous or antisocial behavior are numerous and often difficult to decipher. However, there are some ways to explain violent criminal tendency which hold their roots in social and psychological bases. Often, those prone to violence will demonstrate a history of mental illness or of personal trauma. Children who are physically or sexually abused, for example, may develop into adults with mental illness and a proclivity toward those same types of abuses. Others are simply born with severely disabling psychological handicaps such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, disassociative tendencies or a general array of symptoms producing detachment from reality, anxiety, aggression or behavioral instability. Due to the impediment to understanding the difference between right and wrong, or to developing impulse control or instruments of conscience, many of the mentally ill are also prone to criminal behavior.

However, there are significant shortcomings in the criminal justice system with respect to the identification and treatment of the criminally insane, producing a circumstance where many are not given proper treatment while in captivity and where many are consequently returned to the mainstream population with no less a proclivity toward criminally maladjusted behavior. This means that many spend their lives re-entering and leaving different types of facilities. Evidence suggests that this a fault that rests with the facilities themselves.

Sadly, the issue of criminal insanity is rather misunderstood and typically affiliated most directly with deeply dangerous, violent or antisocial behaviors. And quite indeed, many individuals will fulfill these characteristics. However, quite a great deal others who are either today held in facilities for the criminally insane or who have experienced a shuttling from mainstream population to facility and back again that are not necessary dangerous but simply unfit to stand proper trial for crime. This is supported by the findings at a particularly troubled facility for the criminally insane in Arizona called Forensic Hospital. Here, the inmates run the gamut from those who are severely problematic if allowed into society and others who have instead required this type of psychiatric support in the service of sentencing. Accordingly, Reinhart (2007) reports that "with proper medication and therapy, many of them will improve and return to the community, while others may never get out. The severity of their crimes ranges from a mother who burned two of her children to death to a man who violated probation because he was homeless. 'Most of our patients are your typically seriously mentally ill patients who happened to get into legal trouble,' says psychiatrist Tariq Ghafoor, chief of forensic services. 'But because the people here would not understand their rights, they would not get a fair trial.'" (Reinhart, 1)

This points to a core conflict for those who are mentally ill and charged with transgression against the law. As this case above suggests, little nuance is applied to the context and nature of incarceration or treatment of the criminally insane. The Forensic facilities demonstrate that it is more common to lump together such individuals, producing a context that is neither conducive to comfort or assimilation of mental illness. Instead, this creates a distinctly negative treatment context which reduces the likelihood of treatable individuals from emerging either healthier or with a greater grasp on the differences between right and wrong.

From the description of the hospital used as a case example here, evidence abounds that an absence of proper maintenance, a dearth of financial resources, a tendency toward the use of deeply outdated facilities and a relative disinterest of society toward these individuals has allowed the institutions housing our criminally insane to deteriorate beyond simply ineffectiveness. Indeed, many of these institutions have become dangerous to both patients and workers. Accordingly, "four of the 10 forensic buildings are so badly deteriorated and contaminated with asbestos that they're unusable. The remaining units, state health officials say, pose a security risk to both staff and other patients because of their design and condition." (Reinhart, 1) Those that are in use are designed poorly and in a state of total disrepair, leaving patients and workers exposed to violence, safety hazard, illness and a distinctly bleak environmental surrounding.

These are conditions which have become all too common in the area of housing the criminally insane, denoting the relative absence of sufficient facilities as a primary reason for the frequency with which inmates may find themselves either back on the streets or in criminal facilities where they are even less likely to find rehabilitation or safety. Such a scenario points to the need for improvement recognized by President Obama, who made as a part of his electoral platform a renewal of the promise to treat America's disabled. Therefore, "as a state senator, Obama helped pass a mental health parity bill that requires coverage for serious mental illnesses to be provided on the same terms and conditions as are applicable to other illnesses and diseases. As president, Obama will support mental health parity so that coverage for serious mental illnesses is provided on the same terms and conditions as other illnesses and diseases." (Obama & Biden, 1)