The Medicalization of Deviance and Overview of Mental Health Courts

1732 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conclusion of how poverty is connected to crime rates

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...

... middle of paper ...

... from http://www.dswleads.com/Ebsco/The%20Medicalization%20of%20Deviance.pdf

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

Show More
Related

  • Crazy In America Summary

    1262 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Knight’s Poem, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    Szasz, Thomas. Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 2007. Print. Braslow, Joel T. Mental Ills and Bodily Cures: Psychiatric Treatment in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. California: University of California, 1997. Print.

    Read More

  • Mental Health Disorders in the Criminal Justice System: Annotated Bibliography

    2216 Words  | 5 Pages

    In this research bulletin commissioned by the Criminology Research Council, Ogloff et al. review the level of screening and the instruments used across jurisdictions to assess mental illness in justice agencies. Ogloff et al. intend to highlight the need and argue for a nationwide system of screening of all accused offenders taken into police custody, in order to identify those who require a comprehensive mental health assessment. The authors based their research on interviews and the examination of secondary documents covering criminal justice agencies in each of the states and territories. From the research findings the authors propose ten recommendations in order to improve the coverage and quality of screening for mental illnesses in the Australian criminal justice system. This article is useful for my research topic as Ogloff et al. outline a fundamental issue that requires further research, this may provide direction to my research question. The main limitation of this bulletin stems from the fact that both of the cost models under consideration rely on the assumption that the rates of mental illness in arrestee populations are constant across jurisdictions and hence their calculations would need to vary should the evidence suggest otherwise. The authors suggest that unless the courts, police, and parole authorities are given training and resources to better meet the needs of the mentally ill nothing will be achieved. The ideas within this research bulletin will form the basis of my researc...

    Read More

  • Social Deviance Application: Charles Manson

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    Social deviancy is the violation of social norms. A deviant is someone who rejects folkways and mores. Any action that violates the values or rules of a social group is deviant behavior. In order to actually be characterized as a deviant, the individual must be detected committing a deviant act and be stigmatized by society. A stigma is a mark of social disgrace, setting the deviant apart from the group. Criminality is healthy for society. Deviance affirms our cultural values and norms. Responding to deviance clarifies moral boundaries and brings people together. There will always be people who break society’s rules and that’s important.

    Read More

  • The Boondock Saints’ Positive Deviance

    1358 Words  | 3 Pages

    Adler, Patricia A., and Adler Peter. Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction. 6th ed. Belmont: Thomas/Wadsworth, 2009.

    Read More

  • The Moral Treatment and Its Succes

    1429 Words  | 3 Pages

    Moral treatment is a treatment that uses “psychological methods” to treat mental diseases (Packet Two, 26). In general, moral treatment was a relatively benevolent and humane approach to treat mental disorders. Before the introduction of moral treatment, insane people were regarded by the general public as wild animals whose brains were physically impaired and usually incurable (Packet One, 11). Therefore, regardless of patients’ specific symptoms, physicians generally labeled patients as lunatics and treated them with the same method (Packet One, 11). Because of the perceived impossibility of curing mental illness, physicians put far greater emphasis on restraining patients’ potential danger behaviors than striving to bring them back to sanity. Cruel methods such as bloodletting were widely used, but their effectiveness was really poor. Moral treatment was a response to this ineffective and brutal traditional treatment. The advocates of moral treatment insisted that mental diseases were curable. By providing a friendly environment that contributed to reviving, moral treatment could help patients to...

    Read More

  • Crime is a contested and complex concept. Discuss

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Crime is an irrelevant concept as it is tied to the formal social control mechanism of the State; deviance is a concept that is owned by sociology thus our study should be the sociology of deviance, rather than criminology

    Read More

  • The Exclusionary Rule: Redefining the Crminal Justice System

    1244 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the history of law enforcement within the United States, theories has been explored and implemented as polices in addressing deviant behaviors produced by humans. Models such as Crime Control through the Conflict perceptive suggest the human nature is persuaded by social opportunities and considered a fundamental aspect of social life (Schmalleger, 2009, p. 347). However, social disorders must be addressed in a cordial and civil procedural fairness; thus, individual rights guaranteed by policies such as Due Process ensure that individuals under allegations are treated equally and just. Although crime and deviant behaviors exist within our communities, policies are intended to reduce such disorders by following cohesive criminal justice frameworks with the intentions of protecting individuals accused of crimes. Crime Contro...

    Read More

  • Mental Health within the Criminal Justice System

    2586 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Criminalization of the Mentally Ill

    3759 Words  | 8 Pages

    Lamb, H. R. (2004). Mentally ill persons in the criminal justice system: Some perspectives. Psychiatric Quarterly, 108-126.

    Read More

  • Gary Hardy A Missing Relative

    461 Words  | 1 Pages

    Secondly, there is a claim that a negative trend is evident when the world of health care meets the institution of law enforcement. This claim, supported by the mention of a similar case, where an inmate with a mental illness found deceased in his cell, could have been avoided if the courts sought for compassionate treatment instead of incarceration.

    Read More

  • Mental Illness and Mass Shooting

    1777 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...lo, Kellen. "Treating Mental Health Issues Can Help Justice System." U-T San Diego: Web Edition Articles 6 Mar. 2014: n. pag. NewsBank Special Reports. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Ted Bundy: The Mind of a Killer

    2059 Words  | 5 Pages

    Eysenck, H.J., & Gudjonsson, G.H. (1989). The causes and cures of criminality. Contemporary Psychology, 36, 575-577.

    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

  • Public Criminology

    3279 Words  | 7 Pages

    Conscious efforts to critique existing approaches to questions of crime and justice, demystify concepts and issues that are laden with political and ideological baggage, situate debates about crime control within a socio-historical context, and facilitate the imagination and exploration of alternative ways of thinking and acting in relation to crime and justice. (p. 3).

    Read More

More about The Medicalization of Deviance and Overview of Mental Health Courts

Open Document