Hard Time or Hospital Treatment? Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System

Christine Montross
N Engl J Med 2016; 375:1407-1409
October 13, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

When law enforcement is involved, the trajectory of my patients’ lives veers sharply. The consequences are unpredictable and range from stability and safety to unmitigated disaster. When patients are ill or afraid enough to be potentially assaultive, the earliest decision as to whether they belong in jail or in the hospital may shape the course of the next many years of their lives.

It’s now well understood that the closing of state hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s led to the containment of mentally ill people in correctional facilities. Today our jails and state prisons contain an estimated 356,000 inmates with serious mental illness, while only about 35,000 people with serious mental illness are being treated in state hospitals — stark evidence of the decimation of the public mental health system.

When a mentally ill person comes into contact with the criminal justice system, the decision about whether that person belongs in jail or in the hospital is rarely a clinical one. Instead, it’s made by the gatekeepers of the legal system: police officers, prosecutors, and judges. The poor, members of minority groups, and people with a history of law-enforcement involvement are shuttled into the correctional system in disproportionate numbers; they are more likely to be arrested and less likely than their more privileged counterparts to be adequately treated for their psychiatric illnesses.

The article is here.

How US prisons violate three principles of criminal justice

Judith Lichtenberg

aeon.co

Originally published September 19, 2016

The United States has 5 per cent of the world’s population but 25 per cent of its prisoners. Right now, 2.2 million people are locked up across the country, and while crime has been decreasing since the 1990s, rates of imprisonment are at historic highs. Americans across the political spectrum are deeply dissatisfied with this state of affairs, and agree that mass incarceration costs too much and achieves too little. But there’s also much disagreement – about the role of systemic racism, about the causes of police violence, about the importance of personal responsibility and retribution.

Nevertheless, people can find common ground on three fundamental moral norms that should govern the use of imprisonment as punishment. First, punishments should be proportional to crimes. Second, like cases should be treated alike. Third, criminal punishment should not do more harm than good. Unfortunately, the US system violates each of these principles.

Proportionality requires that the punishment fit the crime. This is more than a mere cliché. It means punishments should be neither excessive nor insufficient. Imprisonment for a parking ticket would be wrong, but so would a slap on the wrist for rape.

The article is here.

In Wisconsin, a Backlash Against Using Data to Foretell Defendants’ Futures

By Mitch Smith
The New York Times
Originally published June 23, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Compas is an algorithm developed by a private company, Northpointe Inc., that calculates the likelihood of someone committing another crime and suggests what kind of supervision a defendant should receive in prison. The results come from a survey of the defendant and information about his or her past conduct. Compas assessments are a data-driven complement to the written presentencing reports long compiled by law enforcement agencies.

Company officials say the algorithm’s results are backed by research, but they are tight-lipped about its details. They do acknowledge that men and women receive different assessments, as do juveniles, but the factors considered and the weight given to each are kept secret.

“The key to our product is the algorithms, and they’re proprietary,” said Jeffrey Harmon, Northpointe’s general manager. “We’ve created them, and we don’t release them because it’s certainly a core piece of our business. It’s not about looking at the algorithms. It’s about looking at the outcomes.”

The article is here.

Stopping the revolving prison door for the mentally ill

by Courtenay Harris Bond
Phillie.com
Originally posted May 10, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

But the unfortunate reality right now is that many people with serious mental illness who commit even minor infractions are locked up, making over-crowded prisons and jails responsible for mental health services they are ill equipped to deal with.

“The police are called on to do too much, and the health care system is not doing enough,” Sisti said. “The whole idea that the police are now front-line mental health workers shows that we’ve abdicated our responsibilities as health care professionals.”

“The police in their best efforts aren’t equipped with the tools”—psychiatric medications, for example, that only physicians and nurses can administer­—“to de-escalate some of these situations,” added Cyndi Rickards, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies at Drexel.

Dr. Philip Candilis, director of the forensic psychiatry fellowship at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, described a jail diversion program in Arlington, Va., where courts work with social service agencies to aid people struggling with mental illness who find themselves in trouble with the law. Mental health courts in Philadelphia and Washington function in a similar way.

The article is here.

Cook County Sheriff Dart: Jailing poor, mentally ill is unjust

Madhu Krishnamurthy
Daily Herald
Originally posted April 6, 2016

The numbers of mentally ill people housed in the nation's prisons and jails are staggering, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says, and many of them shouldn't be there.

Dart, speaking Wednesday at Elgin Community College, has led a campaign to reduce what he calls the unjust incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. He's been recognized by health advocacy organizations for trying to change the criminal justice system, which perpetuates a revolving door at jails. His presentation was part of the college's Humanities Center Speakers series.

The article is here.

Neuroscience is changing the debate over what role age should play in the courts

By Tim Requarth
Newsweeek
Originally posted April 18, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

The Supreme Court has increasingly called upon new findings in neuroscience and psychology in a series of rulings over the past decade (Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana) that prohibited harsh punishments—such as the death penalty and mandatory life without parole—for offenders under 18. Due to their immaturity, the argument goes, they are less culpable and so deserve less punishment than those 18 or older. In addition, because their wrongdoing is often the product of immaturity, younger criminals may have a greater potential for reform. Now people are questioning whether the age of 18 has any scientific meaning.

“People are not magically different on their 18th birthday,” says Elizabeth Scott, a professor of law at Columbia University whose work was cited in the seminal Roper case. “Their brains are still maturing, and the criminal justice system should find a way to take that into account.”

The article is here.

A question of basic morality on legal defense for juveniles

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
Originally published April 4, 2016

Here are two excerpts:

But the public defender often has a conflict of interest. Consider, for example, when two people are accused of stealing a bike. Each might blame the other for the crime, so they can't have the same lawyer. One gets the public defender. For many years, the second one got a private lawyer from a county-approved panel, who was paid by the hour and — county officials argued — had too little incentive to keep costs down.

(cut)

The fee, which has inched up over the years, has yielded results that should have been predictable. More juvenile defendants represented by those flat-fee panel lawyers get sentenced to “camps” — juvenile jails — than their counterparts represented by the public defender. That means a higher cost to taxpayers, who foot the bill for each of those jailed teenagers, even though the outcomes (criminal recidivism, homelessness, employment) are far better for those whose sentences are served in community and school settings.

The full text is here.

Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Retraction Watch
Originally published March 31, 2016

Here is an except:

It’s not often that we see stories of researchers getting sentenced by courts for fraud (even though more scientists are bringing misconduct disputes to the courthouse). Last year, a researcher who confessed to spiking blood samples to boost the findings of an HIV vaccine experiment was sentenced to almost five years in prison, and ordered to pay back millions in grant funding; only a handful of other scientists — such as Eric Poehlman and Scott Reuben — have also been sentenced to jail time for their deeds.

The article is here.

When Self-Report Trumps Science: Confessions, DNA, & Prosecutorial Theories on Perceptions of Guilt

Sara Appleby and Saul Kassin
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Mar 10 , 2016

Abstract

For many wrongfully convicted individuals, DNA testing presents a new and invaluable
means of exoneration. In several recently documented cases, however, innocent confessors were
tried and convicted despite DNA evidence that excluded them. In each of these cases, the
prosecutor proposed a speculative theory to explain away the mismatched confession and
exculpatory DNA. Three studies were conducted that pitted confessions against DNA test
results. Study 1 showed that people in general trust DNA evidence far more than self-report,
including a defendant’s confession. Using student and adult community samples, Studies 2 and 3
showed that in cases in which the defendant had confessed to police but was later exculpated by
DNA, prosecutorial theories spun to reconcile the contradiction attenuated the power of
exculpatory DNA, significantly increasing perceptions of the defendant's culpability, the rate of
conviction, and the self-reported influence of the confession. Implications and suggestions for
reform are discussed.

The cited article is here.

Access to the article is here.

To blame or to forgive?

By Nicola Lacey and Hanna Pickard
Oxford University Blog
Originally published March

What do you do when faced with wrongdoing – do you blame or do you forgive? Especially when confronted with offences that lie on the more severe end of the spectrum and cause terrible psychological or physical trauma or death, nothing can feel more natural than to blame. Indeed, in the UK and the US, increasingly vehement and righteous public expressions of blame and calls for vengeance are commonplace; correspondingly, contemporary penal philosophy has witnessed a resurgence of the retributive tradition, in the modern form usually known as the ‘just deserts’ model.

But if we stop to think about it, this criminal justice practice stands in contrast to significant features of our everyday moral practices. People can and routinely do forgive others, even in cases of severe crime. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that both vengeance and forgiveness are universal human adaptations that have evolved as alternative responses to exploitation, and, crucially, strategies for reducing risk of re-offending. We are naturally endowed with both capacities: to blame and retaliate, or to forgive and seek to repair relations. We have a choice. Which should we choose?

The blog post is here.

How America's criminal justice system became the country's mental health system

By German Lopez
Vox.com
Originally published March 1, 2016

Here are two excerpts:

It's a terrifying statistic: Someone with an untreated mental illness is 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians approached or stopped by law enforcement, according to a 2015 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center.

(cut)


If people were getting comprehensive care and support, police most likely would not need to get involved in many of the circumstances that end up in horrible tragedies. But very often in the US, that's not happening.

Before Kevin broke into a neighbor's house and was arrested by police, Pete tried to take steps that would have prevented the whole encounter. Kevin had just suffered a psychotic episode in 2002, and Pete raced Kevin to emergency care to hopefully get Kevin into some form of long-term care, potentially against Kevin's will if necessary.

But doctors said they couldn't do anything because Kevin, an adult, didn't appear to pose a threat to himself or others in the four hours they sat in an emergency room. So he was let free, and within 48 hours, he went through the episode in which he broke into the neighbor's house.

The article is here.

The Brain Gets Its Day in Court

By Greg Miller
The Atlantic
Originally published February 29, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

A handful of cases have made headlines in recent years, as lawyers representing convicted murderers have introduced brain scans and other tests of brain function to try to spare their client the death penalty. It didn’t always work, but Farahany’s analysis suggests that neuroscientific evidence—which she broadly defines as anything from brain scans to neuropsychological exams to bald assertions about the condition of a person’s brain—is being used in a wider variety of cases, and in the service of more diverse legal strategies, than the headlines would suggest. In fact, 60 percent of the cases in her sample involved non-capital offenses, including robbery, fraud, and drug trafficking.

Cases like Detrich’s are one example. Arguing for ineffective assistance of counsel is pretty much a legal Hail Mary. It requires proving two things: that the defense counsel failed to do their job adequately, and (raising the bar even higher) that this failure caused the trial to be unfairly skewed against the defendant. Courts have ruled previously that a defense attorney who slept through substantial parts of a trial still provided effective counsel. Not so, at least in some cases, for attorneys who failed to introduce neuroscience evidence in their client’s defense.

The article is here.

Does the desire to punish have any place in modern justice?

By Neil Levy
Aeon Magazine
Originally published February 19, 2016

Human beings are a punitive species. Perhaps because we are social animals, and require the cooperation of others to achieve our goals, we are strongly disposed to punish those who take advantage of us. Those who ‘free-ride’, taking benefits to which they are not entitled, are subject to exclusion, the imposition of fines or harsher penalties. Wrongdoing arouses strong emotions in us, whether it is done to us, or to others. Our indignation and resentment have fueled a dizzying variety of punitive practices – ostracism, branding, beheading, quartering, fining, and very many more. The details vary from place to place and time to culture but punishment has been a human universal, because it has been in our evolutionary interests. However, those evolutionary impulses are crude guides to how we should deal with offenders in contemporary society.

Our moral emotions fuel our impulses toward retribution. Retributivists believe that people should be punished because that’s what they deserve. Retributivism is not the only justification for punishment, of course.

The article is here.

Outsourcing the Mentally Ill to Police

By Rich Lowry
The National Review
Originally posted January 1, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In its analysis of 2015 police shootings, the Post found dozens of cases in which the police were called as a means of getting treatment. Shirley Marshall Harrison called the Dallas police when her schizophrenic, bipolar son was out of control. He was shot down while allegedly charging police with a screwdriver. “I didn’t call for them to take him to the morgue,” she said of the cops. “I called for medical help.”

It’s a poignant lament, but why do the families of the severely mentally ill need to rely on the police for medical assistance? When someone has a heart attack or gets cancer, we don’t call the police.

The opinion piece is here.

Mental health courts significantly reduce repeat offenses, jail time

Medical News Today
Originally published December 4, 2015

New research from North Carolina State University finds that mental health courts are effective at reducing repeat offending, and limiting related jail time, for people with mental health problems - especially those who also have substance use problems.

"Previous research has provided mixed data on how effective mental health courts are at reducing recidivism, or repeat offending, for people with mental health problems," says Sarah Desmarais, an associate professor of psychology at NC State and senior author of a paper on the research. "We wanted to evaluate why or how mental health courts may be effective, and whether there are specific characteristics that tell us which people are most likely to benefit from those courts. The goal here is to find ways to help people and drive down costs for state and local governments without impinging on public safety."

The entire article is here.

The Dark Side of Empathy

By Paul Bloom
The Atlantic
Originally published on September 25, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Our reaction to these atrocities can cloud our judgment, biasing us in favor of war. The benefits of war—including avenging those who have suffered—are made vivid, but the costs of war remain abstract and statistical. We see this same bias reflected in our criminal-justice system. The outrage that comes from empathy drives some of our most powerful punitive desires. It’s not an accident that so many statutes are named for dead girls—as in Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, and Caylee’s Law—and no surprise that there is now enthusiasm for “Kate’s Law.” The high incarceration rate in the United States, and our continued enthusiasm for the death penalty, is in part the product of fear and anger, but is also driven by the consumption of detailed stories of victims’ suffering.

Then there are victim-impact statements, where detailed descriptions of how victims are affected by a crime are used to help determine the sentence imposed on a criminal. There are arguments in favor of these statements, but given all the evidence that we are more prone to empathize with some individuals over others—with factors like race, sex, and physical attractiveness playing a powerful role—it’s hard to think of a more biased and unfair way to determine punishment.

The entire article is here.

Jerry Coyne: "You Don't Have Free Will"

Originally Published on Jul 7, 2015

Jerry Coyne's presentation at Imagine No Religion 5 in Vancouver, June 2015

Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Behavior: A Public Health-Quarantine Model

Gregg D. Caruso
[Draft 6/11/2015]
[Cite final version: Southwest Philosophy Review 2016, 32 (1)]

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to
adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are
insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that
one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible
with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled
out by the skeptical view per se face significant independent moral objections (Pereboom 2014,
153). Yet despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to
respond to criminal behavior—in particular preventive detention, rehabilitation, and alteration of
relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for
good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2013, 2014),
taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model
within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—
which I call the public health-quarantine model—provides a framework for justifying quarantine
and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other nonretributive
alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s
quarantine analogy does on its own.

The entire paper is here.

What happened when Portugal decriminalised drugs

The Economist
Originally published June 11, 2015

Economist Films: For 20 years The Economist has led calls for a rethink on drug prohibition. This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. “Drugs: War or Store?” kicks off our new “Global Compass” series, examining novel approaches to policy problems.

Economist Films is a new venture that expresses The Economist’s globally curious outlook in the form of short, mind-stretching documentaries.

Flawed Humans, Flawed Justice

By Adam Benforado
The New York Times
Originally posted June 13, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Our justice system must be reconstructed upon scientific fact. We can start by acknowledging what the data says about the fundamental flaws in our current legal processes and structures.

Consider the evidence that we treat as nearly unassailable proof of guilt at trial — an unwavering eyewitness, a suspect’s signed confession or a forensic match to the crime scene.

While we charge tens of thousands of people with crimes each year after they are identified in police lineups, research shows that eyewitnesses chose an innocent person roughly one-third of the time. Our memories can fail us because we’re frightened. They can be altered by the word choice of a detective. They can be corrupted by previously seeing someone’s image on a social media site.

The entire article is here.