What should we do with criminals?

What if part of the process was maintaining a job and becoming re-aclimated to society as a participant? If we agree that a certain part of the population of prison would want to rehabilitate maintaining a job upon release might be an important thing. So if you are doing a job for a company that pays a similar wage as a free person, then you can continue that employment as you are released. Wouldn't that make a transition so much easier? Wouldn't that even make the time a person serves more productive for everyone?

Of course this would not apply to all prisoners as there are just human scum who need to be locked in a cage. But for those people who are going to be released the time in prison as punishment could be used for better purposes towards rehabilitation and participation in society.

My assumption is that his employer never properly explained the hazards of the job to him. I've worked with a lot of hardworking and enthusiastic first generation immigrants over the years that were very poorly trained, either due to a language barrier or apathy on the part of the employer. Who in their right mind would knowingly risk brain damage for an entry level job?

Agreed, and any job you're trained for in prison should be a job you're able to do once you get out. None of this shit where prisoners work as emergency firefighters for pennies a day, only to find out they're ineligible to become firefighters once they're released.

I did specify that the financial insecurity could be real (poverty) or imagined (greed).

I'm casting a really wide net when I say "mental illness," that includes things like personality disorders, poor impulse control, and a criminal lack of empathy. Whenever I read about high profile court cases in the newspaper, there's almost always a line or two about awful traumatizing stuff that happened to them as a child.

YES

"Punishable by fine" shouldn't be code for "legal for the wealthy." Fines should hurt at least a little, no matter who the perpetrator is.

YES

If we're not wasting time letting out the unrepentant scumbags, halfway houses would have a much easier time helping convicts that sincerely want to change re-acclimate to society. Job placement programs that directly relate to in-prison training would be a huge part of that.

Don't keep us all in suspense dude, tell us why people are really committing crimes.

If hospitals were run anywhere near the way they were depicted in "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest," they deserved to be abolished. I mean, look at the shit they got away with doing to Rosemary Kennedy.

That being said, I think developments have been such that we've leapfrogged over the need for massive state asylums on the scale that we once did. Some people will never function outside of a controlled environment, yes, but not enough that we need to bring this back institutionally.

That, and I don't trust the system not to abuse this and use it against minorities, especially radicals and trans women.

Example: there was this one particular spot in downtown London where a lot of rich people like to park despite all the signs that said not to. They finally passed an ordinance allowing the city to impound and crush vehicles on the first offense.

Suddenly, there were no more Bentleys or Lambos or McLarens or BMW shit boxes hanging out in the area anymore

People with mental health problems are far less likely to be the perpetrators than the victims of crime, likewise there's a widely held stereotype of mental illness being a causative factor in violence which has never really been evidenced as anything other than perception.

People with mental health problems are more likely to be incarcerated, bit that's another question altogether.

As for financial instability the truth is that prominent financial disparities are a far better predictor.

The difference is crucial, because people can be financially secure but still perceive themselves as disadvantaged compared to their visible peers and neighbours.

Likewise people can be dirt poor but still enjoy financial status over their even poorer compatriots.

The Internet has exacerbated this previously local phenomenon by making such comparisons more geographically and socially remote, but the principle holds.

People tend to measure their lot in life relative to others, not according to any criteria for defining poverty.

Like I said upthread, I'm casting a wide net when I say "mental illness." I've been angry enough to want to hurt people before, or been vaguely tempted to commit crimes, but my rational mind stopped me from actually going through with either. Sometimes that was through empathy, other times it was through a reasonable fear of the consequences of those actions. Other peoples minds clearly don't work that way. To me that says there's something wrong upstairs with those people.

We all recognize that people with fetal alcohol syndrome have poor impulse control because of what happened to them in the womb. There's an infamous wannabe serial killer in Canada that was born an orphan in Romania, it's generally accepted that the orphanage providing her little to no human contact for the first eight months of her life permanently stunted her capacity for empathy.

My belief is that many violent criminals are similarly stunted or broken in some way, and that figuring out how and why that happens would benefit society as a whole.

Like i said, there's genuine instability and then there's greed.

Yes but people with FAS (even if we class it as a mental illness rather than an acquired brain injury/learning disability, which is an ongoing point of contention) represent a very small portion of the population. Likewise "classic" serial killers are the rarity even amongst violent offenders.

You said "most crimes" but what you have described are fringe cases which frequently play to popular perceptions.

That's not just wordplay, imagine the stigma faced by anyone seeking employment or even just honest acceptance with psychosis. Imagine how much worse that stigma becomes when the popular perception is of someone who may become unexpectedly violent at a moment's notice.

These are stereotypes the world can do without, every bit as damaging as those attached to race and sexuality.

Remember when black men were all rapists and homosexuals preyed on children? How about trans people lurking in bathrooms?

Violence is an inherently human propensity and the evidence strongly suggests that when proper controls are used mental health sufferers are no more likely to be violent than anyone else, merely that they are more likely to be convicted and feared.

Okay, mental illness/brain injury/learning disabilities then. Something that makes their brains or minds not function like the rest of society, that's more than just "they chose to do that just because." Malfunctions that don't get the same attention and care that they should.

I personally think sugma is more dangerous than any stigma.

The attempt to "explain" criminality with easy answers like mental illness seems wrongheaded to me. We are all capable of doing some bad things and should not hide from that.

We tried that and another conservative took his place and did the same things he did.

No drama.

Very real and damaging truth for millions of people.

The point you're primarily missing is you're conflating unrelated but superficially similar concerns and overlooking the fact that not only do they not share causes and outcomes but none of them are at the root of the problem you're wanting discussed.

Treating a brain injury as a mental health issue is akin to treating lung cancer as a form of asthma. It isn't and neither are significant contributers to crime statstics.

Assessing a violent offender with mental health problems takes time, lots of time, but it can be broken into a few broad phases once the immediate danger is contained.

Firstly you have to eliminate the more likely transient factors such as alcohol, drug use, uncontrolled blood sugar, so on and so forth.

Beyond the urine, breath and blood testing procedures which may or may not happen post arrest you realistically need a few days observation merely to get a baseline presentation and compare that to available documentation.

Following that you then look at whether the symptoms displayed are actually consistent with a mental problem as suggested and either refer to another specialty or begin a trial and error process of observing that person's response to medication very closely under controlled conditions.

You look for key indicators and stress responses identified in the early presentation and signs of insight, reduced frequency and (yup) deception.

Over time you hopefully find a balance of medication that allows the cognitive and behavioural work to really start. We can then assess whether people should remain in hospital, can be returned to the justice system, can be treated by the more limited facilities in jail if they are already serving a sentence, but here's the rub:

Most people who are violent when they are ill remain violent when they recover. The violence may change in form, it may become more focused, purposeful, even competent (bear that in mind) but the number of patients we see whose violent tendencies are illness specific are a minority. By and large we treat one and manage the other.

That's key to the point I'm making here. It's not a frivolous empty platitude to dismiss but a genuinely problematic myth that psychotic people are more likely to commit crimes.

Violent people commit violent crimes.

Some of them have mental health problems, but so do a far greater number who live blameless lives.

More of a concern to me are the number of times someone with no identifiable illness, disorder, physical trauma to the brain, no apparent history, anything we can treat, risk assess or monitor, simply gets up one day and kills their neighbour.

It's not common but more common than you might imagine.

Because human beings are animated garbage sculptures who will attempt whatever amount of heinous bullshit they think they can get away with.

Sadly this is not always untrue.

Now to me, that feels like trying to explain away criminality with an easy answer. It's not like sociologists haven't been able to show a correlation between lead exposure and crime rates, or abortion restrictions and crime rates.

Just saying "we're all capable of doing bad things and some people choose to" feels about as scientific as when Dayton used to complain that he found men attractive but never acted on it, so why couldn't homosexuals do the same?

You seem really hung on up one term I used as a catch-all while trying to start a conversation to distract from the side effects of smoke inhalation.

Give me a good term for "why their thinkin' ain't quite right" and I'll use that.

Meanwhile, a picture of my morning:

But not you. Never you.

Feel free to throw the book at me and bury me under the prison when I cross a line I'd impose on anyone else.

And the rest of the animated garbage sculptures who will attempt whatever amount of heinous bullshit they think they can get away with, they get to walk around with as few restrictions as possible until they get around to committing their heinous bullshit?

When I worked in retail they used to tell us that 10% of the customers would never steal, 10% would always steal no matter what, and 80% would steal if the circumstances were right for it. Part of our job was keeping the stars from aligning for the 80%.

I imagine you object to such a violation of liberty? Everyone should get a freebie before spending the rest of their lives in jail?

Because this isn't about atmospheric lead?

Now, your question was about what should be done with criminals with mental health problems.

Pretty sure I've given you a fairly solid basis there for how things are currently done for forensic patients detained here under the Mental Health Act as it stands. That the person doing said assessment is not infrequently me it seems reasonable to expect some value to be attached there.

As for being hung up, absolutely I am. I've also explained why the catch all doesn't hold.

No, my question was about what to do with criminals in general, and I made a distinction between "financially motivated" and "reasoning not optimal for whatever reason" criminals, and apparently I was inarticulate about those two categories in my opening post.

Okay, well... good luck with that.

Your opening comment was that IYHO most crimes are caused by financial instability and mental illness.

Everything stemmed from there.

It's difficult to base a worthwhile discussion on a faulty premise and downplaying the mental health (and class) discriminations stemming from that faulty premise speaks of well intentioned ignorance.

Never tell someone with schizophrenia they are being dramatic over that stigma if you are with a straight face going to speak up for equality in other arenas because we are looking at one of, if not the, most potent and debilitating forms of discrimination in society.

It's just not spoken about enough.

Has long since been clarified.

Then I'll ask you a question.

Had someone started a thread by claiming black people are responsible for most crimes would you call them out on it?

You know what? Get fucked. I'm not wrong, no matter how much it hurts your feelings.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mental-illness/symptoms-causes/syc-20374968

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4158644/

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases...onality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7357542/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/psychopathy

https://medlineplus.gov/personalitydisorders.html

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17786-intermittent-explosive-disorder

https://chadd.org/adhd-weekly/adhd-...minality-preventing-trouble-before-it-begins/

This stuff deserves to be looked into and discussed openly. Did you appreciate the additional clarification when they expanded the concept of autism to cover mild end of the spectrum, or were you screeching about stigmas back then as well? Were you open-minded when they expanded diagnosis criteria for ADHD to include adults as well as children, or did you just rant about black people?

No, I pointed out that there's little link between mental health issues and violence, but a socially accepted stereotype which leads to a great deal of discrimination and disenfranchisement.

I am well aware of the definitions you link to, and also the reasons why different health authorities hold different views on personality disorders (including psychopathy) as being classified as a mental illness. I prefer to view it as a distinct category if only for practical reasons. You can treat schizophrenia, you can treat depression, you can treat OCD, but you can't really do a great deal to treat a personality disorder whereas mixing PD patients into general psyche ward environments tends to result in very toxic dynamics. Hence the existence of dedicated personality disorder services.

Autism is by any reasonable definition a specific learning difficulty by the way, whereas ADHD is a related condition whose sufferers are more likely to be incarcerated, not necessarily to commit crime in the first instance as per my posts and your link.

So again, would you call out a thread which started with the opening line "most crime is committed by black people"?

After all many people do believe exactly that and can trot out cherry picked data to support their claim provided a suitable dearth of critical thinking. They could make all the same defences you have done and would be making the same errors you are doing right now. Black people are far more likely to be incarcerated too.

Black people face prejudice, victimisation and reduced opportunities in life compared to their white peers. Likewise mental health patients suffer prejudice, victimisation and reduced opportunities compared to the wider population.

Where, exactly, does my analogy fall down? You've been very quick to dismiss it.

Is it possible that you have grossly underestimated the challenges faced by a marginalised group who have the additional burden of being largely invisible except for a media who focus exclusively on the sensationalist minority?

We are talking about people who have no voice, after all you don't see mental health advocacy groups or communities organising on the scale we do with LGBTQ+ for instance, precisely because the only "community" of mention can be found on inpatient wards.

These conversations happen and have been happening for a very long time and we've long since moved beyond a paradigm where illness causes criminality, precisely because in the majority of cases it simply doesn't.

Society at large, however, has a long way to catch up.

Don't project.

My understanding is that Spot261 is a mental health professional, so I can understand his position on this.

I'm in close agreement - I know many people who struggle with mental health issues. Only one to my knowledge has been violent - once - and it cost him his marriage and very nearly access to his kids. He's since gotten proper treatment and gone on to find a new partner and father another child, and is now amicable with his ex and the kids (who used to dread visiting him).

14thDoc argues that something "ain't right upstairs" with anyone who feels violent thoughts but doesn't listen to either their morality or the fear of punishment when they act on them. But everyone has a breaking point - when you feel so angry you just lash out, or so low that punishment seems like it's a little bowl of piss relish to go with your shit sandwich. It's not limited to those with mental health issues, and it's doing THEM a disservice to suggest it. Oh, you were violent? Well, you clearly weren't right in the head to begin with!

I completely agree that it should not be abusive. However, I strongly disagree that it should never be for a private entity. The State should not have a vested interest in a for-profit enterprise, such as setting up a manufacturing plant, or a historic prison farm, that would generate a profit. Lease out non-violent inmates to for-profit private enterprise where they can actually learn a useful skill. But, make sure they are payed comparable to others with the same experience and skill level. Keep that money in a fund that their families can draw from (kids still have to eat even if dad's in prison) or sit on it until they are released and a single individual would have a nice bit of start-up money to buy groceries and make deposits on a place to live after they get out.

The State should take none of it aside from the mandatory taxes we all pay. Then, maybe if they do well enough, the employer would hire them on afterwards. If not, they have x number of months/years learning an actual skill.