Freedomain Radio

http://anaphilo.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/dealing-with-the-criminally-insane-without-the-state/

Thoughts?  Am I right?  wrong?

As I tell a good friend...

I don't know how best we should deal with the sociopaths of society, but I think I very worst idea is to give them all our guns and put them in charge of our lives...

A person incapable of restraining violent impulse (eg. a feral, insane, or brain-damaged person) lacks the ability to fully evaluate, appreciate, and comprehend his own actions, and is thus incapable of advocating his own rights.

Violent restraint of such a person would not be a rights violation. However, such restraint could extend morally only to the preservation of one's own safety and to that of the violently uncontrollable person. It could never be justifiably interpreted to mean that it's ok to torture, humiliate, or experiment on that person.

I would further argue that failure to restrain such a person would constitute criminal negligence as such failure could potentially and plausibly endanger others.

MrCapitalism:

As I tell a good friend...

I don't know how best we should deal with the sociopaths of society, but I think I very worst idea is to give them all our guns and put them in charge of our lives...

this.is.an.argument.destroyer I love it.

Now lets look at what happens to violent offenders that claim they are insane:  Lets say Bob punches Sally in the face, but this time he says that the voices in his head made him do it.

Unfortunately for Sally there's no tomorrow.

The DRO finds him Criminally Insane.  What happens to Bob now?

He'd be put in quarters for the criminally insane.   Although escape for Bob would fast become a game and he might leave without a trace.  The path he chose has led him to his grave.

Well, criminally insane people are probably not welcome on the streets, so Bob would have no choice but to go to an Institution where he would be treated.

True, he'd be locked away and kept restrained.

After the Psychiatrists at this institution find him to be recovered, he would then be released out into society, albeit under probation.

Disapprobation, but what has Bob done?  Bob has yet only just begun to take your fucking lives!

LaMirigaAnarkisto:

http://anaphilo.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/dealing-with-the-criminally-insane-without-the-state/

 

Thoughts?  Am I right?  wrong?

If I followed you correctly,  you're saying your solution to the problem of the "Criminally Insane" is to lock them up until a Doctor says they're OK?

So it's the same solution as the state uses today?

1.  Who pays for their treatment?

2.  What if they are indigent?

3.  Who defines what is and isn't "Criminally Insane"?

4.  What if the individual isn't willing to be confined?   Is it OK to use force to retain him?

5.  Who can the individual appeal his sentence to?

6.  What if a patient is incurable?   Do you confine him for life?

Personally I think your solution is too complicated.   In a free society, people would be far more responsible for their own safety and it would be far more common for people to go armed.   Someone who can't control their violent & criminal impulses would have a very short life as they would inevitably attack someone who was prepared to defend themselves.

Second, I don't like that you are attempting to judge people by what is inside their heads.   We should focus on the effects of their actions and not the motivations.   If they harm someone, they owe restitution.   If they cannot pay, then the DRO can work out a way to garnish future wages.   If garnishing future wages is not an option or if they fail to pay, then the attacker should be ostracized from the community.

Alan Chapman:

I would further argue that failure to restrain such a person would constitute criminal negligence as such failure could potentially and plausibly endanger others.

OK, assuming that "failure to restrain" was criminal negligence......then who gets the unearned positive obligation to implement and pay for it?

His parents?   His neighbors?  The community as a whole?

What if he was living alone when the mental issue came on?

What if it was a drifter or someone from another community?   Who is responsible then?

''Would have no choice but to go to an asylum and get treated''

When people are criminally insane denying them a choice of operating in society doesn't force them to go to an asylum, using force to take them to an asylum takes them to an asylum.

Sometimes the choice may be that they will kill someone unless you cart them off to the insane asylum.  I don't imagine there will actually be many of these cases of course, the majority of crime and violence is preventable but there will be some people who lose connection with reality and can't be dealt with any other way than using force and it surely could be classed as self defence.

I may have jumped the gun on that statement. I'll try to remember what I was thinking when I wrote it.

On reflection I have some further thoughts about your post.

Alan Chapman:

A person incapable of restraining violent impulse (eg. a feral, insane, or brain-damaged person) lacks the ability to fully evaluate, appreciate, and comprehend his own actions, and is thus incapable of advocating his own rights.

Violent restraint of such a person would not be a rights violation. However, such restraint could extend morally only to the preservation of one's own safety and to that of the violently uncontrollable person. It could never be justifiably interpreted to mean that it's ok to torture, humiliate, or experiment on that person.

The standard of saying that rights only apply to those people who are capable of advocating for them bothers me.  Like many actions, this seems like a good idea when applied to the criminally insane but I wonder about spillover to other groups like the mentally retarded and/or other developmentally disabled individuals who may not be violent but you could justify confining them as being "in their best interest".  

It just seems like a slippery slope to me.   Once you start deciding it's OK to confine some people then naturally the question arises about other groups. 

Second, I wonder how much resistence people will have to the threat of involuntary confinement and if that would cause them to avoid treatment because they were afraid of being exposed (even if they haven't acted violently yet).   

One more thought.

Treating the criminally insane differently than everyone else creates two standards of justice.

Given that the NAP prevents us from applying the death penalty for the crimes for which there can't be any realistic restitution (like murder), a free community has only one available response.  They can ostracize the offender.  In effect this is a community "death-penalty" without the violence.  And for the most serious offenders, a community may even decide to warn neighboring communities before any such offender is exiled  so they can be prepared.  

Now if we say we're going to confine and treat the criminally insane, would that mean that a murder by someone so diagnosed mean that rather than ostracizing the offender, we would confine & treat them?  Eventually releasing them back into the community?

So then the community would have two punishments for the same crime.  Not because of differences in the effects of the offense (in both cases the victim is just as dead as the other) but rather because of some immeasurable question of what is happening inside the head of the offender.

As I see it, these competing punishments creates two problems:

1. Some offenders will attempt to game the system.   If by pretending to be insane or failing to take medication, I could avoid ostracism at the cost of a few years of confinement & treatment....well it seems like an easy choice to me.
2. It adds complexity to the justice system as it will require trained experts to evaluate and potentially treat any offender, and a longer trial process to provide a fair process.

Tangentially, I also wonder if the power granted to the experts that provided the evaluations & treatment wouldn't corrupt them and encourage them to confine more people in the interests of profit.  Not necessarily only individual or monetary profit but rather the benefits that come from being seen as part of a group that has power over others.

People of diminished mental capacity still have rights, but I was referring specifically to people who are incapable of restraining violent impulse such as a person who may involuntarily harm himself or another. Such a person must have his rights advocated for him.

A child cannot fully advocate his own rights for the reasons I specified in my original post (which is also why a child cannot enter into contract), but I wouldn't argue that therefore children have no rights.

Alan Chapman:

People of diminished mental capacity still have rights, but I was referring specifically to people who are incapable of restraining violent impulse such as a person who may involuntarily harm himself or another. Such a person must have his rights advocated for him.

It's interesting that your clarification is itself an example of the slippery slope I was trying to point out.   It's one thing to discuss confining someone who is a threat to others.    It's a whole different case to discuss confining someone who is only a threat to themselves.   For after all, if we have complete self ownership does that not include the right to self destruction if we so choose?

Who do we add to the list next?   May be we should add anyone who has an extremely low IQ that probably won't be able to take care of themselves and will in effect be doing themselves harm through their own mistakes.  Say anyone under IQ 50?  90?

Alan Chapman:

A child cannot fully advocate his own rights for the reasons I specified in my original post (which is also why a child cannot enter into contract), but I wouldn't argue that therefore children have no rights.

Agreed.

However I would not advocate a distinct standard of justice for child offenders any more than I would for the criminally insane.  After all the impact of a crime should be judged by its effect on the victim.  Not the motivation or understanding of the aggressor.   Given that standard, restitution for a crime would be the same if the aggressor was 10 or 50 just as it should be the same if the offender was sane or insane.   And the same for sober or intoxicated.

I'm curious as to what causes someone to be criminally insane. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that it stems from child abuse. In which case, lets bring the next generation's ACE scores down and play the lifeboat scenario by ear.

wispaintstyle:

I'm curious as to what causes someone to be criminally insane. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that it stems from child abuse. In which case, lets bring the next generation's ACE scores down and play the lifeboat scenario by ear.

That is one way to majorly oversimplify things.  In evaluating the causes for and the genesis of any psychological condition, you have to look at the etiology perhaps a bit more before blindly stating child abuse.  For a start it is extremely unlikely that child abuse would be an only cause.   There is always going to be some kind of genetic predisposition to something like schizophrenia which can lead a person to be considered criminally insane.  That is your ''necessary cause''

In mental illness it helps to look at whether things are:

necessary cause

Sufficient cause

distal causal factor

Proximal causal factor

Reinforcing contributory cause

If you can find more than one causal event or indicator you can start to build a pattern but it is rare to find a simple cause and effect chain.  Instead there will be complex interactions between the causal chains.

Once you've established some kind of rigorous method of evaluating a persons problem then whilst looking at the biological possibilities in the neccessary or sufficient causes you can look at environmental influences.  Early deprivation, trauma, marital discord, bad parenting or parental psychopathology.

We love to chuck around the word abuse but the fact is there is a possibility that psychologically neglect may be worse than abuse for extremely young infants, I don't think it is just abuse we should worry about.  One thing is certain is that for the young they may never overcome these childhood difficulties,  It would be nice if education taught some basic coping skills instead of say a language they'll never need to speak or some other useless 5 year endeavour of no benefit. 

So that is certainly one environmental factor but there are more,  Mental illness has been tied to societal and cultural contexts, prejudice and discrimination, uncertainty, density, urban stress.  Unemployment has been shown to have a huge impact, correlate that with the prevalence of mental illness in welfare dependant groups and you will see a trend.  

I'm also intrigued by the findings that violent blows to the head can cause mental problems such as instability in the excitatory controls in the seretonin complex.  Leading to violent or suicidal urges, as little as 5-7 violent blows could induce this kind of problem.