The Pros And Cons Of Mentally Ill Offenders

It’s rare to see many of those affiliated with the law to all be on the same page. However, across the criminal justice system there is a striking question: should mentally ill offenders be held accountable for their actions? Now how do we consider some one mentally ill? To start off we define what a mental illness is which refers to a wide range of mental health conditions and disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. The mentally ill are simply those who suffer such conditions and disorders that have made them somewhat outcasts of society. Those who are mentally ill may suffer from mental disorders such as depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and even eating and other addictive behaviors. Many of the mentally ill who
Once again instead of being set free and just sentencing them to prison to live out their lives, they require medical assistance in mental health establishments which would treat them rather than worsen their condition. “There is an increasing recognition that severe mental illness is a reason to spare people not from responsibility for their crimes, but from the ultimate sanction of death” (American Civil Liberties Union, page 5). Being imprisoned has no positive impact and so they should be sentenced to punishments that include rehab which better their conditions rather than just being sentenced to death or even sentencing them to life in prison or decades of it where it would seem like a living hell to them. Even so by still bearing that responsibility they won’t even be set free which is correct as if they were, they would simply continue to harm others and themselves without receiving proper help. Despite whatever medicine the mentally ill may take in prisons to “calm them down” or simply “put them at ease” isn’t enough. They require more than just simple drugs to better
Due to this, the mentally ill wouldn’t be able to fully grasp the meaning of their actions and so many bring up the question how can we hold people such as them, responsible for something they lack the knowledge of? These mental disorders not only make these people delusional and so the morality sane people possess do not reside in those with mental disorders. Many argue that people must be in the correct mental state to be held accountable for the crimes as they simply do not fully understand what they are being charged with. They just have to be competent or educated enough to stand for trial, but yet they aren’t able to. “The M'Naghten Rule (or test) focuses on whether a criminal defendant knew the nature of the crime or understood right from wrong at the time it was committed” (FindLaw, para 3). As the tests suggest it finds out if a criminal knew what he was doing rather than unsure of what happened and the test is also a common insanity test to whether what decision jurors come to when deciding if someone is guilty or