The Medicalization of Deviance and Overview of Mental Health Courts

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Medicalization of deviance in the United States (U.S.) over the years has expanded as medicine has become the main response to deviance through the use of therapeutic social control. Medicalization is referenced to in criminal justice as one of the ways of explaining deviance and is used to determine the responsibility of an offender. Deviance characterizes behaviors and actions that violate social norms and is seen as having an illness or a disease needing treatment. Therapeutic social control uses medicine and science as a treatment of deviance.

Medicalization of deviance as stated by Horwitz (1981) is primarily used as a tool to identify the causes of deviance within an individual rather than in the faults of society (p. 750). The types of deviant behaviors addressed by medicalization in the U.S. includes: mental illness (insanity), child abuse, sexual abuse, homosexuality, alcoholism, delinquency, hyper activity, and the biological study of crime (Horwitz, 1981, p.750). As outlined by Owens et al., (2012) the three ways medicine can be a direct social control over deviance are medical technology, collaboration, and ideology (p. 110). The medical technology consists of the techniques and tools used to treat many illnesses and deviance. Under the criminal justice system, a crime or deviant act that is medicalized through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Mental Disorders (DSM) can be treated instead of punished (Owens et al., 2012, p. 110). Medical collaboration refers to the medical professions opinions and expertise that are provided to legal counsel when an offender pleas insanity (Owens et al., 2012, p. 112). Medical ideology can be seen in two ways such as: blaming a person’s deviant behavior on a disease...

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Owen, S. S., Fradella, H. F., Burke, T. W., & Joplin, J. W. (2012). Chapter 4: Deviance and Social Control. In Foundations of criminal justice (pp. 98-119). Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press.

The People of the State of Colorado v. James Holmes, 12CR.1522 (2013). Retrieved from http://www.courts.state.co.us/Courts/District/Cases_of_Interest.cfm?District_ID=18

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, 11(4), 570-586. doi:10.1037/1076-8971.11.4.570

Watson, A., Hanrahan, P., Luchins, D., & Lurigio, A. (2001). Mental Health Courts and the Complex Issue of Mentally Ill Offenders. Psychiatric Services, 52(4), 477-481. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.52.4.477

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