New trend in punsihment?

[Silent Warrior]

Background:
A while ago, two 18-year-old... well, girls, were found murdered in southern Sweden. (I don't clearly recall if they were raped, but don't shout at me if they were.) The perpetrator was found, and was recently sentanced to psychiatric care. This isn't the first time that sentance has been passed.

So, I ask you: Is this a good way to go? Psych-care instead of prison? It depends on the situation, I know, but imprisonment isn't famed for its purpose of rehabilitation.
The first ones to bring up a good catch 22-reference gets respect.

[Bahamut2000X]

I think this all really matetrs on the situation. Although I think maybe everyone should at least get a little bit to help them a bit, but still jail would be neccsarry to keep them in. And maybe give everyone a bit of treatment and some of the ones with them ost needs for it or that are getting out give them more so they can be better fixed for when they leave and hopefully won't do what they did to get in there in the first place.

[Nait]

Psyciatric ward is often better, because of the maximum jail-times around here it can be a far harshes punishment, time-wise.


EDIT:

Whoa, that came out wrong.

[War Angel]

I say both. Lock him up, and give him medical care.

[The Man]

A lot of people who commit crimes are certifiably insane and need mental help, so yes, I should say this makes sense. This isn't really anything new though; people have been able to plead insanity for years.

[Dr Unne]

So long as they're kept away from society, and they truly do need help and aren't just getting off easy.

[LH]

How you can rape or murder and not be in need of psychiatric help baffles me. Throwing one violent person in the ring with hundreds of others and then releasing them after a decade or two of stewing surely doesn't sound like a reasonable way to rehabilitate someone.

[Peegee]

Not all prisoners require psych care, which is odd. Maybe they all do (but not the same amount), but I don't know for certain. All I know is that the system is supposed to rehabilitate them so they are fit for society. A murderer (doesn't matter if rape is involved) requires psych care. Locking ppl up without helping them is a waste of my tax money.

[Kahless]

I oppose it simply because in cases like rape it rarely works at all. Rapists really can't be rehabilitated. Murder may be different. A hospital isn't a prison. Rather than serve a sentence the guy can walk out as soon as he convinces a doctor that he's "cured". Then the guy is back on the streets potentially at it again.

[Big D]

[q=War Angel]I say both. Lock him up, and give him medical care.[/q][q=Unne]So long as they're kept away from society, and they truly do need help and aren't just getting off easy.[/q]I agree. If someone's totally divorced from reality, incapable of comprehending their own actions or their actions' effects, then nothing will be gained through imprisonment, except further risk. Detention in a psychiatric institution protects society, and also keeps the inmate/patient in a facility where their condition can be controlled, maybe even treated.

[The Man]

Originally posted by LH
How you can rape or murder and not be in need of psychiatric help baffles me. Throwing one violent person in the ring with hundreds of others and then releasing them after a decade or two of stewing surely doesn't sound like a reasonable way to rehabilitate someone.

Valid point. I certainly think the prison system needs a hell of a lot of reform.

Kahless, I'd like to know where you get the idea that rapists "can't be rehabilitated."

[Garland]

Rehab is fine, and I don't want to come across as inhumane, but let's not forget about punishment. Wrong-doers should be punished first and foremost. Rehab should come after the punishment. Make rehab something the criminal does on his/her own time, and not as a replacement to justice. I'm all for a criminal being rehabilitated, but I want them to do hard labor first. Justice is retribution before it's therapy anyway.

[Dr Unne]

I think being stuck in a mental hospital is punishment.

[Garland]

Innocent people with severe mental disabilities can be subject to the same treatment. If such care is punishment to a criminal, than it's unsuitable for the innocent mentally ill. If it is pleasant enough to be the right place to care for the innocent mentally ill, than it's too pleasant to punish criminals. Either way, something needs to change.

[Anaralia]

This is an interesting question. A few years back I would have voted for medical treatment when necessary, but then I had the honor of meeting a very intelligent psychiatrist, who owned and ran his own mental hospital. A very interesting man.

Anyway, current events at the time included a vote on the Florida death penalty, so when the talk swung around to that, he surprised me by saying that he favored it tremendously. He explained (my memory’s a bit hazy on the terminology) that from what he’d seen, career criminals had “holes” in their psyche, specifically, in their ego (if I remember correctly). The id flew directly to the surface, so there was nothing stopping the instincts from their birth to their execution.

The gist of it was: that the rest of us have, to differing degrees of “thickness”, a layer of conscious and semi-conscious thought that stops animal impulses from being carried out, and these people simply didn’t. They did anything they wanted to, and he’d seen this in children as young as 6, sometimes with no reason at all. No history of family violence, no drugs, and sometimes these kids were going to be criminals, he knew it, and there was nothing that he could do.

But I digress. The conclusion was (and this from a man who ran his own privately owned psychiatric hospital): that there was nothing he or anyone else could ever do to help these patients. Ever. They were going to kill and rape and maim, at home, in jail, in the hospitals. They were, for all psychiatric purposes, very similar to animals in emotional and impulse control, and that’s why he favored the death penalty.

I don’t know how right or wrong he was, and this is the only medical opinion on the subject that I’ve ever gotten, but I thought I’d throw it out there. I still favor medical treatment, but now I’m not so sure about how much it can help. We could lock them up in mental hospital forever, and that would keep them off the streets, and I suppose that’s as good a solution as any.