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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (6402)	6/13/2003 6:16:46 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

simply discharge criminals with mental illness. You're kidding right? Tell me you're kidding. This is simply crazy. This is bad even for the American legal system. There is evidence that it does help and there is evidence that it does nothing. That is part of the debate. The answer to this seems simple: more and better studies are needed. Making decisions in ignorance has nothing to recommend itself over just tossing a coin. A radical question that occassionally comes up is the question on whether mental illness is even real. Amyone who thinks it is not has never seen anyone who is really mentally ill. How about fighting with or talking to people or things that aren't there? How about seemingly completely unprovoked violence? Or interminable periods of passivity? And none of that says all that is called mental illness is. But some of it is. What are the criteria? After Mr. Reagan emptied the state asylums to save money, a woman appeared in the downtown area of one of the towns near here. She was ...... STRANGE. I remember one instance when my wife and I were walking by her on the street. She was intently staring at a spot on the wall of one of the buildings. A we walked by, she started yelling at us that we had killed her baby and started throwing things at us from a nearby garbage can. We ducked inside a store whose owner locked the door and called the police. They quickly appeared. She started haranguing them and repeating the charges. The police talked to us and the store owners and some other witnesses. They then arrested her (she resisted fiercely) and took her away. Sane? I think not. On a later occasion, I saw her again on the main downtown street. I figured she could not possibly have any income and must be sleeping on the street. I went up to her, stuck a $50 bill in her hand (and, strangely, I got the impression she didn't recognize what it was) and quickly left. At least she could get off the street that night. Its pretty much smoke and mirror stuff when you try to establish exact criteria. True. It's like pornography. You know it when you see it. Are we criminalizing mental illness? The intent of an asylum should be to give asylum and such treatment as may prove helpful. They should not be prisons. What would you do? Have us throw people who are clearly incapable of fending for themselves out onto the streets? Such as was done with that woman I mentioned earlier? Do programs for the treatment of mental illness want criminals diverted to them? No. And facilities for the simply insane should be separate from facilities for insane criminals. Does the criminal have the right to refuse treatment...then what? Larry Niven, a science fiction writer, postulates in one of his novels a society where failure to take drugs necessary to control mental illness is a death penalty offense. That seems rather extreme. But the basic idea is right.