Civil Commitment and the Mentally Ill

811 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Does the insanity defense serve as a useful function today refences

It is very hard to differentiate an ordinary mental health from a mental illness because there is no easy way of knowing unless you test them. Also, some mental health illnesses can be imitated by physical disorders. Mental health illnesses are ruled on any physical disorder, they are diagnosed and treated from the signs and symptoms, and also on how much the illness affects your everyday life ("Mental health: What's normal, what's not - Mayo Clinic", n.d.). Civil commitment laws have been around in the United States ever since the 1800s. Civil commitment cases mostly consist of family members of a mentally ill person who will try to commit the person in order to guarantee that they get help. The court system does not always care for civil commitment if the person is not showing direct danger or threats to them self or to others around them ("Civil Commitment of the Mentally Ill", n.d). In this paper we will talk about the insanity statutes being used in the state of Georgia and how often the insanity defense is being used, and the major criticisms of the insanity defense. For many years the public has fought with the idea that a mentally ill person should not be held accountable for criminal crimes (Allnutt, S., Samuels, A., & O'Driscoll, C. 2007). In states Montana, Idaho, and Utah, does not consent for the defendant to plea an insanity defense. The defendants must be capable to stand trial, but they do have the right to present evidence of a mental disease as evidence that they did not have the required intent ("A Crime Of Insanity - Insanity On Trial | FRONTLINE | PBS", n.d.). The state of Georgia uses a reformed style of the M'Naghten Rule ("The Insanity Defense Among the States - FindLaw", n.d.). Daniel M’Naghten was an Eng... ... middle of paper ... ...2011). Wrightsman's psychology and the legal system. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. HRW: Ill Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness: VII. DIFFICULTIES MENTALLY ILL PRISONERS FACE COPING IN PRISON. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1003/7.htm The Insanity Defense Among the States - FindLaw. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/the-insanity-defense-among-the-states.html Mental health: What's normal, what's not - Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.org/mental-health/art-20044098 Schmalleger, F. (2011). Criminal justice today: An introductory text for the 21st century. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall. United States Insanity Defense Law Summary and Law Digest. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://lawdigest.uslegal.com/criminal-laws/insanity-defense/7204

Show More
Related

  • Dedicated Police Officers in the Film, End of Watch

    1221 Words  | 3 Pages

    Seigal, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

    Read More

  • Re-institutionalization of a deinstitutionalized nation: Mental Illness

    1452 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Girl Interrupted And American Horror Story: Insane Asylum

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...

    Read More

  • The Insanity Pleas: How Insane Is The Insanity Plea

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    For those that don’t know, the insanity plea, as defined by Cornell Law, is based on the fact that a person accused of a crime can acknowledge that he/she committed the crime, but argue that he/she is not responsible for it because of his or her mental illness, by pleading “not guilty by reason of insanity”. This first became a problem in 1843. Daniel M’Naughten was trialed for shooting the secretary of the Prime Minister in attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister himself. It was said that M’Naughten thought the Prime Minister was the person behind all his personal and financial problems. The jury ruled him “not guilty by reason of insanity”. The reason for the verdict was M’Naughten...

    Read More

  • Ovid's Metamorphoses

    336 Words  | 1 Pages

    The insanity defense is not widely used, and is raised in only about 1% of all criminal cases. Defendants found "not guilty by reason of insanity" are rarely set free, being instead committed to a mental hospital until confinement is no longer deemed necessary.

    Read More

  • The Insanity Defense

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    Much of my skepticism over the insanity defense is how this act of crime has been shifted from a medical condition to coming under legal governance. The word "insane" is now a legal term. A nuerological illness described by doctors and psychiatrists to a jury may explain a person's reason and behavior. It however seldom excuses it. The most widely known rule in...

    Read More

  • The Criminal Justice System And Mental Illness

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Validity of the Insanity Plea

    1186 Words  | 3 Pages

    Blau, GL, H McGinley, and R Pasewark. “ Understanding the Use of the Insanity Defense. ”Journal of Clinical Psychology 49.3 (1993): 435-440. MEDLINE. 10 May. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Criminalization of the Mentally Ill

    3759 Words  | 8 Pages

    The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

    Read More

  • Andrea Kennesy Yates

    900 Words  | 2 Pages

    Schmalleger, Frank. Criminology: A Brief Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., Publishing as Prentice Hall., 2011.

    Read More

  • The Insanity Plea

    1204 Words  | 3 Pages

    Torry, Zachary D., and Stephen B. Billick. "Overlapping Universe: Understanding Legal Insanity and Psychosis." Psychiatric Quarterly 81.3 (2010): 253-62. Web.

    Read More

  • The Insanity Defense

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    The insanity defense pertains that the issue of the concept of insanity which defines the extent to which a person accused of crimes may be alleviated of criminal responsibility by reason of mental disease. “The term insanity routinely attracts widespread public attention that is far out of proportion to the defense’s impact on criminal justice” (Butler,133). The decision of this defense is solely determined by the trial judge and the jury. They determine if a criminal suffers from a mental illness. The final determination of a mental disease is solely on the jury who uses evidence and information drawn from an expert witness. The result of such a determination places the individual accused, either in a mental facility, incarcerated or released from all charges. Due to the aforementioned factors, there are many problems raised by the insanity defense. Some problems would be the actual possibility of determining mental illness, justify the placement of the judged “mentally ill” offenders and the total usefulness of such a defense. In all it is believed that the insanity defense should be an invalid defense and that it is useless and should potentially be completely abolished.

    Read More

  • Immigrants Do NOT Increase Crime Rates

    2225 Words  | 5 Pages

    Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 27, 343-360. http://ccj.sagepub.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/content/27/3/342

    Read More

  • Insanity Plea

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    Winslade, William J, Ph.D, and Judith Wilson Ross, The Insanity Plea: The Users & Abusers of the Insanity Defense, New York

    Read More

  • Defence Of Insanity Essay

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    The basis of insanity is upon M’Nagten Rules (1843) which set forward the principles of a defence when the “defendant had a defect of reason” or a “disease of the mind” and was not able to understand the nature of the act they did or did not know what they were doing was wrong. These three conditions must be proved for the defence of insanity to become available. Insanity is available for the all cases that require mens rea except for strict liability cases.

    Read More

More about Civil Commitment and the Mentally Ill

Open Document