5 ms·

>Well, if he is considered sane by trustworthy professionals, then why not? Psychology as a science is remarkable in its inability to make accurate predictions

>Well, if he is considered sane by trustworthy professionals, then why not? Psychology as a science is remarkable in its inability to make accurate predictions. I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate.

alkonaut 9y ago
Someone decided the person was insane to begin with. If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. Now, this is a nearly non existent problem isn't it? For major crimes, being locked up in psychiatric care is a longer, or indefinite sentence, than would be served in prison (this varies between countries of course).
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  > If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. This guy was getting locked up no matter what. The only question was, was he getting locked up in a prison or in a psych ward? So do we trust psychiatry enough to say "lock him up here rather than there"? Sure. Do we trust them enough to say "It's safe to release him now"? That's a harder question.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    An interesting point (raised by the article) is the term of imprisonment. If he hadn't gotten NGRI, but had gone to jail, and it wasn't a life-without-parole sentence, he would have been released eventually. In the involuntary commitment case, is it reasonable to hold a person longer than what the equivalent prison sentence would be, even if the person is still considered mentally ill after the equivalent time?
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      I can only answer that for law where I live (Sweden) - the answer is a clear yes. Not only is it possible but it's likely/common.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      > In the involuntary commitment case, is it reasonable to hold a person longer than what the equivalent prison sentence would be, even if the person is still considered mentally ill after the equivalent time? In England a prisoner who becomes mentally ill and is sent to hospital will be kept in hospital until they are well. The legal powers to send them to hospital and keep them there are listed in the Mental Health Act. People are detained under section of the MHA - commonly known as sectioned. When a prisoner detained under section is in hospital and their prison sentence ends their section is converted to a different one, which allows treatment to continue.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- IncRnd 9y ago
  > If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. That's not true. Doctors didn't make a decision to lock up the individual. It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Doctors decided the person was clinically insane. Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. Which is why this is such a small problem - people aren't often declared sane and released if they committed serious crimes. > It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured. No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same.
    - IncRnd 9y ago
      > Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. > No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same. You said I was wrong, and then wrote text that supported my comment. It doesn't matter if the evaluation is the same. The state of sanity differs from the state of insanity, yet not showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives.
      - alkonaut 9y ago
        I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying that an evaluation of someones sanity is the same whether they are stepping in through the door of a locked facility, or stepping out. It's not harder to do after than before - it's just more important to get right. You can call that "harder" but the evaluation is basically the same. > showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives. Right. And a false positive might send someone to this facility instead of prison while a true negative might let someone out while dangerous.
ska 9y ago
I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate. You mean like we do for DA's, parole boards, expert (court) testimony, etc. ?
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  Parole boards don't claim that empirically speaking the person to be released will never re-offend only that they have met the legal standards previously outlined for parole. Similarly a DA only attempts to prove to a jury that a defendant is guilty and it us their job to argue as much. If an expert witness claims something that is untrue he would be subject to perjury.
  - belorn 9y ago
    Technically, isn't that because anything else would practically impossible and yet we want to have concept like limited jail time and ex-prisoners who live non-criminal lives. In order to allow for such concept, we also allow a less than perfect results from DA's, parole boards, and courts. If we want to have concept like people being cured of medical conditions, then we must also accept that doctors will make imperfect distinction between healthy and sick. The question society must make is how far we can accept that mistakes happen, and what safe guards we impose to handle the situations when someone fails.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Doctors who claim someone id safe enough to release after treatment don't claim the person can't reoffend either. They say it's unlikely enough that it's not worth spending tax money holding them. Obviously if someone is found lying they should be held responsible - but the released person reoffending does not make the evaluation willfully dishonest.
    - ska 9y ago
      Precisely
xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
There are multiple factors at hand. For example, soldiers kill people, because it's "war" or they have "orders" or it's "the just way to deal with things". If they'd kill the same person on the streets as a civilian, everyone would be disgusted and angry. Yet for it's former reason people feel the need to give medals and applaud. You should think about this really hard for a second. Our minds are not entirely our own, and simple cognitive pushes here and there can change our entire perspective just like that, while OBJECTIVELY it's still a dead human in this particular example. With that said, one should not seek black and white answers in this concept. Mentall illnesses and for that matter the law system are dynamic and constantly in motion.
- xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
  There are people who are blind, deaf, have organ failure, have malformed limbs etc. Yet we expect that people's brains have 99.9% succes rate, if our perspective sees fit. ..this is our GREATEST BIAS ever. And anyone with a brain (no pun) should consider themselves less than objective, if they think they or anyone else has anywhere near full control of their own brain. A few simple example, but there are many; - Try holding your breath untill you pass out, Your mind won't let you. - Try to get rid of anxienty, just by thinking "anxiety off". ..never happened ever - Go in a rollercoaster, and turn off your adrenaline function. How did that go? - Remember that time you got drunk and didn't remember the night before? But you did remember to navigate the road, walk towards your house, put the key in your door, walk to the correct room, and distinguish object bed from object chair, carpet, pc etc. ..but you don't know anything?? If your mind can do that without you at the helm, then why is it hard to see for some that control is more illusion than reality in many cases. Even when the evidence is right in front off us. Our sense for acknowledgement, or better yet the fear that we might not have full control is so scary, we try to push control on ourselves to a point where we border denial and pride. tldr; People only experience their own cognition, that they forget so many off our brain systems are out of our direct control and beyond our knowledge.
kelnos 9y ago
> I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate. If that became the case, no one would be released, ever.

alkonaut 9y ago

Someone decided the person was insane to begin with. If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. Now, this is a nearly non existent problem isn't it? For major crimes, being locked up in psychiatric care is a longer, or indefinite sentence, than would be served in prison (this varies between countries of course).

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
> If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. This guy was getting locked up no matter what. The only question was, was he getting locked up in a prison or in a psych ward? So do we trust psychiatry enough to say "lock him up here rather than there"? Sure. Do we trust them enough to say "It's safe to release him now"? That's a harder question.
- kelnos 9y ago
  An interesting point (raised by the article) is the term of imprisonment. If he hadn't gotten NGRI, but had gone to jail, and it wasn't a life-without-parole sentence, he would have been released eventually. In the involuntary commitment case, is it reasonable to hold a person longer than what the equivalent prison sentence would be, even if the person is still considered mentally ill after the equivalent time?
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    I can only answer that for law where I live (Sweden) - the answer is a clear yes. Not only is it possible but it's likely/common.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    > In the involuntary commitment case, is it reasonable to hold a person longer than what the equivalent prison sentence would be, even if the person is still considered mentally ill after the equivalent time? In England a prisoner who becomes mentally ill and is sent to hospital will be kept in hospital until they are well. The legal powers to send them to hospital and keep them there are listed in the Mental Health Act. People are detained under section of the MHA - commonly known as sectioned. When a prisoner detained under section is in hospital and their prison sentence ends their section is converted to a different one, which allows treatment to continue.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
IncRnd 9y ago
> If we could trust them to lock them up we need to trust them to release them too. That's not true. Doctors didn't make a decision to lock up the individual. It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Doctors decided the person was clinically insane. Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. Which is why this is such a small problem - people aren't often declared sane and released if they committed serious crimes. > It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured. No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    > Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. > No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same. You said I was wrong, and then wrote text that supported my comment. It doesn't matter if the evaluation is the same. The state of sanity differs from the state of insanity, yet not showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying that an evaluation of someones sanity is the same whether they are stepping in through the door of a locked facility, or stepping out. It's not harder to do after than before - it's just more important to get right. You can call that "harder" but the evaluation is basically the same. > showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives. Right. And a false positive might send someone to this facility instead of prison while a true negative might let someone out while dangerous.

ska 9y ago

I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate. You mean like we do for DA's, parole boards, expert (court) testimony, etc. ?

KekDemaga 9y ago
Parole boards don't claim that empirically speaking the person to be released will never re-offend only that they have met the legal standards previously outlined for parole. Similarly a DA only attempts to prove to a jury that a defendant is guilty and it us their job to argue as much. If an expert witness claims something that is untrue he would be subject to perjury.
- belorn 9y ago
  Technically, isn't that because anything else would practically impossible and yet we want to have concept like limited jail time and ex-prisoners who live non-criminal lives. In order to allow for such concept, we also allow a less than perfect results from DA's, parole boards, and courts. If we want to have concept like people being cured of medical conditions, then we must also accept that doctors will make imperfect distinction between healthy and sick. The question society must make is how far we can accept that mistakes happen, and what safe guards we impose to handle the situations when someone fails.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  Doctors who claim someone id safe enough to release after treatment don't claim the person can't reoffend either. They say it's unlikely enough that it's not worth spending tax money holding them. Obviously if someone is found lying they should be held responsible - but the released person reoffending does not make the evaluation willfully dishonest.
  - ska 9y ago
    Precisely

xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago

There are multiple factors at hand. For example, soldiers kill people, because it's "war" or they have "orders" or it's "the just way to deal with things". If they'd kill the same person on the streets as a civilian, everyone would be disgusted and angry. Yet for it's former reason people feel the need to give medals and applaud. You should think about this really hard for a second. Our minds are not entirely our own, and simple cognitive pushes here and there can change our entire perspective just like that, while OBJECTIVELY it's still a dead human in this particular example. With that said, one should not seek black and white answers in this concept. Mentall illnesses and for that matter the law system are dynamic and constantly in motion.

xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
There are people who are blind, deaf, have organ failure, have malformed limbs etc. Yet we expect that people's brains have 99.9% succes rate, if our perspective sees fit. ..this is our GREATEST BIAS ever. And anyone with a brain (no pun) should consider themselves less than objective, if they think they or anyone else has anywhere near full control of their own brain. A few simple example, but there are many; - Try holding your breath untill you pass out, Your mind won't let you. - Try to get rid of anxienty, just by thinking "anxiety off". ..never happened ever - Go in a rollercoaster, and turn off your adrenaline function. How did that go? - Remember that time you got drunk and didn't remember the night before? But you did remember to navigate the road, walk towards your house, put the key in your door, walk to the correct room, and distinguish object bed from object chair, carpet, pc etc. ..but you don't know anything?? If your mind can do that without you at the helm, then why is it hard to see for some that control is more illusion than reality in many cases. Even when the evidence is right in front off us. Our sense for acknowledgement, or better yet the fear that we might not have full control is so scary, we try to push control on ourselves to a point where we border denial and pride. tldr; People only experience their own cognition, that they forget so many off our brain systems are out of our direct control and beyond our knowledge.

kelnos 9y ago

> I'd ask those professionals be criminally liable if their assessment proves inaccurate. If that became the case, no one would be released, ever.