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Let me play devil's advocate. From what she's saying I'm drawing the conclusion that mental illness correlates with drug use which correlates with violence. The

Let me play devil's advocate. From what she's saying I'm drawing the conclusion that mental illness correlates with drug use which correlates with violence. The prevalence of mental illness in the population is small, so the proportion of the mentally ill among violent criminals is also small, but if mental illness is a predictor of violence then being more aggressive about institutionalizing the mentally ill would provide society a better return on investment with respect to preventing violence than policies aimed at the general population (such as gun control).

DanBC 14y ago
Mental illness is not a predictor of violence. We're not just interested in the proportion of people with mental illness in the population of violent criminals. We are also interested in the proportion of violent criminals in the population of people with a mental illness. We find that very few people with a mental illness are violent. We find that people with mental illness are far more likely t be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrators of violent crime.