Gotham is a television series based off the DC comics when batman is still a boy. Gotham is notorious for its high crime rate and infamous villains. The series revolves around James Gordon a new cop that learns throughout the plot how corrupt the law system is in Gotham. Although Gotham exaggerates the flaws in the law system it does have some truth in it. Mental illness is a big factor that makes up quite a few villainous characters in the series. Three of these villains that were captured and sent for treatment came back into Gotham sane and go back to doing unlawful things. Theoretically letting the villains go with no treatment or punishment. According to the article "Addressing Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System." this happens …show more content…
The article “Problems in the Criminal Justice System” uses real cases to pinpoint where human error can interfere with justice whether it was intentional or not. Ex-judges state in the article there can be an error in the forensic science, appeals process, police abuse, jailhouse snitches, deals with the devil and cover-ups. Gotham shows a really corrupt system with police working with gangsters and bendable to the will of whoever is the most powerful. It's appalling how bad Gotham is and seems unrealistic but in truth, it happens a lot more than we’d like. A good example of a devil’s deal is when on Thanksgiving eve of 1991 in texas May was sentenced as guilty and sentenced to death on the word of Miles. Miles was told that if he names the murder that pulled the trigger the police would give him a deal so he could get off on a lighter sentence. Miles was intimidated with the threat of an execution if he didn’t say who pulled the trigger so he named May. Later overwhelmed with guilt Miles confessed his false statement against May. Miles felt the pressure of police and other people to put May under the bus and situations that are complicated and play at people's emotions happen a lot. The police probably had no intention of trying to get him to name a false partner but were just doing everything they could to find the killer but what they did actually do more harm than good. Another point is that even the most honorable law enforcers may not follow the law system subjecting it to faults. Jim Gordon was Gotham’s white knight that did everything he could by the book. At one point he goes against the law though because he felt like he had no choice. A villain got away with kidnapping the mayor and killing other political figures so he himself could become mayor. This villain got away from any lawful punishment because he was so powerful, however. The former mayor that the villain kidnapped
In the book Crazy in America by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, she illustrated examples of what people with mental illness endure every day in their encounters with the criminal justice system. Shayne Eggen, Peter Nadir, Alan Houseman and Joseph Maldonado are amongst those thousands or more people who are view as suspected when in reality they are psychotic who should be receiving medical assistance instead, of been thrown into prison. Their stories also show how our society has failed to provide some of its most vulnerable citizens and has allowed them to be treated as a criminals. All of these people shared a common similarity which is their experience they went through due to their illness.
Conspiracy is defined as “An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement 's goal.” (Legal Information Institute, n.d) The three police officers worked together and planned the crime together. No one individual did more than the other and they needed each other’s help to pull the crime off. Individuals sometimes have a hard time trusting law enforcement for reasons someone may or may not understand. However, it is officers like mentioned in the case study who ruin the department’s reputation. Each one of these officers acted in the same demeanor with the same intentions. That could easily give the impression that they Kansas City Police Department is corrupt and untrustworthy. Not only was their decision affecting the case they were handling, but their jobs and the reputation of the department. Each officer involved easily could have made the decision to not partake in the crime. However, they all agreed steal and intimidate the
Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007, The identification of mental health disorders in the criminal justice system, prepared by Ogloff, J.R.P., Davis, M.R., Rivers, G. and Ross, S., Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
The type of crimes that these offenders commit can either be minor or violent crimes. It has been an issue on how people think that having a mental illness leads to violent crimes, when in reality not all of them commit violent crimes. An example of an offender committing these type of crimes would be Johnnie Baxstrom. Johnnie Baxstrom was a mentally ill offender who had committed numerous crimes throughout his life like drinking and property offenses. It wasn’t until October 21, 1958 where he committed a violent act by attacking and stabbing a police officer with a knife. In essence, according to studies people with severe psychological illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crimes than the general
Wouldn’t it be completely irrational to sentence every mentally ill individual to jail purely because they suffered from a mental illness? Often, mentally ill people behave in an eccentric manner and allure the attention of police officers who do not differentiate the mentally ill from mentally stable people and immediately charge them with misdemeanors. There are approximately 300,000 inmates, with the number increasing every year, which suffer from a mental illness and do not receive proper treatment. Jails are not adequately equipped to care for mentally ill inmates, which can lead to an escalation of an inmate’s illness. Society has failed to provide enough social resources for citizens suffering from psychiatric illnesses in its community, transferring mentally unstable individuals between mental institutions and jails, when in fact adequate aid such as providing proper medication, rehabilitation opportunities, and more psychiatric hospitals in communities is a necessity to reconstitute these individuals.
Lamb, H. Richard., Weinberger, Linda E., & Gross, Bruce H. (2004). Mentally ill persons in the criminal justice system: Some Perspectives. Psychiatric Quarterly 75(2): 107-126.
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.
Lamb, H. R. (2004). Mentally ill persons in the criminal justice system: Some perspectives. Psychiatric Quarterly, 108-126.
Courts, are usually established to either declare a defendant innocent or announce him guilty with a particular sentence depending strictly on the crime. However, the Yuma Mental Health Court is like no other court in the U.S Criminal Justice System. This unique court has specifically been established for two main reasons. The first reason, is to maintain mental ill defendants out of any jails or prisons, in order for them to receive proper treatments. The next reason, is that this court tries to help special defendants by sending them to treatment agencies so they can either be provided with medications or get some form of therapy. Yuma County is very fortunate to have this type of court in their area. In this writing, this author will analyze
This essay intends to address the role that state agencies, both within the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and more broadly the institutions of education, employment and health, play in supporting and implementing diversionary programs for offenders with mental health problems. Mental health is clearly one of the most critical issues facing the Australian and New South Wales (NSW) CJS with research indicating that offenders with mental health problems constitute the majority of those within the prison system. The current strategies for diversion will be critically evaluated in order to determine their effectiveness with regard to the delivery and production of justice, cultural sensitivity for Indigenous Australians will also be considered. The social construction of mental illness and the associated process of stigmatisation of this particular group will be explored in conjunction to explain why society still fails to prevent the mass entry of people with mental health issues into the traditional CJS.
Literature Analysis and Research Proposal of the Correlation between Mental Illness and Violence and Crime
Mental health and the criminal justice system have long been intertwined. Analyzing and understanding the links between these two subjects demands for a person to go in to depth in the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry, because there are many points of view on whether or not a person’s criminal behavior is due to their mental health. Some believe that an unstable mental state of mind can highly influence a person’s decision of committing criminal actions. Others believe that mental health and crime are not related and that linking them together is a form of discrimination because it insinuates that those in our society that suffer from poor mental health are most likely to become a criminal due to their misunderstood behavior not being considered a normality in society. In this report I will go into detail of what mental health and mental illness is, what the differentiates a normal and a mentally unstable criminal, give examples of criminal cases where the defendant’s state of mind was brought up, introduce theories surrounding why one would commit crimes due to their mental health, and lastly I will discuss how the criminal justice system has been modified to accommodate mental health issues.
Our laws have allowed individuals to slip through the cracks of our justice system. Criminals who have raped and killed have walked on technicalities. The results have left the officers with a sense of failure by the system. Some police officers have taken matters in their own hands.
"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it" [Lord Acton, British Historian]. It is human nature that the more power one desires the more corrupt actions they have to commit to attain power. Power is the ability to have control over people and/or things. People who are powerful can and in most cases will create an illusion of anything they want you to see about them. This illusion can make people blind to their true intentions. For instance police officers are looked at as good, we looked to them for our safety because they are here to "protect" us. Yet there are many reports of police brutality on innocent citizens. Even if a crime were to be committed there is no need for police to use violence of any sort unless action was taken on them. If no attempt of action was taken on an officer then the officer is abusing its power. Leading people to believe that police officers are corrupt meaning dishonorable, immoral, or not pure. In which case this idea of power leading to corruption is not only true but happens to those least expected to. In William Shakespeares' tragedy, Macbeth, the character Macbeth gains power by killing people and lying, he kills king Duncan out of greed, he kills his "best friends" Banquo out of fear, and then fails to realize that he is not invincible.
Schizophrenia has many symptoms, some of them are, delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking or speech, and abnormal behavior. Symptoms of Schizophrenia in teenagers can be withdrawn from friends or family, a drop in performance in school, trouble sleeping, depressed or an irritable mood, and a lack of motivation.