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A short summary on the 8th amendment
A short summary on the 8th amendment
A short summary on the 8th amendment
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Throughout the course of time issues have arose in lawsuits regarding the mentally ill. How one should be handled in a situation has become controversial. With the growing number of ill inmates entering long sentencings or execution, finding a way to accommodate such a matter is difficult. As an effort to serve these persons, officials typically consider a guilty state of mind resulting in placement to mental health facilities in exchange for execution or sentences. Protected under the 8th amendment "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted". If such a notation is present the debate of weather the unbalanced should receive such penalties is contradicting. Persons may be found
How do the issues facing those doing strategic planning differ from those doing tactical planning? Can the two really be
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
...from completely liking the impact their condition has on their behavior. Mentally handicapped respondents, particularly the individuals who are not fiscally well-to-do, are regularly spoken to by inadequate direction. They say courts frequently choose trial lawyers who are "excessively unpracticed, exhausted, or uninterested" to legitimately shield their customersand left their defendant to make their own particular shutting contentions. At last, mentally retarded respondents face members in the criminal equity framework including barrier lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and juries—who are inconceivably uninformed of the nature and importance of mental handicap, are regularly more concerned with the political and expert results of acquiring a "triumphant" death penalty sentence than genuinely acknowledging the impact this condition has on the indivudual's perception.
The view of the American culture is that executing those who are mental retarded is against our morale's and values. Instead the Amicus Brief provided by the APA helps to give assistance in using a set of procedures to follow when dealing with capital crimes of the mentally retarded (APA, 2013).
Vaknin, Sam. "Many People with Mental Illness Should Not Be Exempt from the Death Penalty." The Death Penalty. Ed. Jenny Cromie and Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
"Mentally Ill Offenders in the Criminal Justice System: An Analysis and Prescription." Sentencingproject. The Sentencing Project, Jan. 2002. Web. 07 May 2014.
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, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 570-586.
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.
Is the death penalty consistent with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments? This essay will address this question and present a short history of the death penalty in America.
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.
The issue of executing mentally ill criminals has been widely debated among the public. They debate on whether it is right or wrong to execute a person who does not possess the capacity to think correctly. The mental illness is a disease that destroys a person’s memory, emotion, and prevent one or more function of the mind running properly. The disease affects the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and relates to others.When a person is severely mentally ill, his/ her ability to appreciate reality lack so they aspire to do stuff that is meaningless. The sickness is triggered by an amalgamation of genetic, and environmental factors not a personal imperfection. On the death penalty website, Scott Panetti who killed his mother in-law and father-in-law reports that since 1983, over 60 people with mental illness or retardation have been executed in the United States (Panetti). The American Civil Liberties Union says that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who suffered from an earnest mental illness (ACLU).Some people apply the term crazy or mad to describe a person who suffers from astringent psychological disorders because a mad person look different than a mundane human being. The time has come for us to accept the fact that executing mentally ill offenders is not beneficial to society for many reasons. Although some mentally ill criminals have violated the law, we need to sustain a federal law that mentally ill criminals should not be put to death.
The Eighth Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791 and it states “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” (Rossum & Tarr, 2009). However, since the latter part of the 1970’s the United States has proceeded with the execution of 1277 convicted felons (Death Penalty Information Center, 2011). To many people these executions represent a violation of the felon’s constitutional rights and should not have been allowed. On the other hand, if we take an in-depth look, we can see that death caused by electrocution or lethal injection recognizably would not be considered immoral or unjustified provided that the felon was granted a fair trial in a court of law (Bedau, Cassell, 2004).
Several states authorize police officers to arrest mentally ill people who have not broken any law. It is argued that this process is a way to promote public order. Hospitals also transfer mentally ill patients to jail in order to deal with the overflow. It is not uncommon for children to be confined to criminal detention centers because there is a lack of facilities for severely mentally ill children. Relying on the criminal justice systems to be surrogate mental health systems conflicts with the basic notions of justice. (Aufderheide,
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.
In this assignment, I will address and identify the role of social workers and their practice while working with offenders. Depths that will explore the many outcomes and gains that this role can perceive, along with outlining the strengths and weakness, including the acts and policies that play a vital role in the processes when working with