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The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill
- Roboprog 13y agoI was on vacation last week, went to the Puget Sound area in Washington. Downtown Seattle has the usual homeless people wandering around like most cities in the U.S.. We went to Victoria BC in Canada one afternoon. No homeless beggars threatening the pedestrians. Crazy Canadians and their healthcare system, getting the mentally ill off the streets.
- refurb 13y agoSo you're comparing a major US city of 3.4M people (greater Seattle area) to a small Canadian city of 344K (greater Victoria area)? I've lived in several major Canadian cities during my lifetime and the homeless problem is huge, particularly in Vancouver. Universal healthcare doesn't do much if the person refuses treatment.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago"SINCE 1994 Tracey Aldridge has been arrested 100 times, jailed 27 times for more than 1,000 days and spent a total of eight years in prison." The math does not add up. There were not 27000 days since 1994. Did I misinterpret something?
- WestCoastJustin 13y agoGreat example of something that does not belong here. A social political issue with absolutely zero to do with tech or hacker news! Why is this getting upvotes?
- javajosh 13y agoAs heartwrenching and important as the issue is, yeah, kill it.
- Tsagadai 13y agoWe need more articles about people winning the VC lottery and less about the wider suffering in society.... Social issues are issues which affect society. It doesn't concern you that there are people who haven't received treatment for their mental health problems making them a danger to themselves and society? It doesn't concern you that money is being wasted while cumulatively cheaper and more efficient solutions exist? What sort of hacker are you if you aren't seeking out more efficient solutions to existing problems?
- saturdayplace 13y agoIt concerns me. This discussion should not be on hacker news. These opinions are not mutually exclusive. Flagged the story.
- maratd 13y ago> This discussion should not be on hacker news. Ok. I'll bite. Where should it be? What site provides deep discourse into these topics in an intelligent manner?
- yareally 13y agoIf the person you're replying to is going to flag it based that vague criteria, they might as well flag much of the front page. One should start finding better articles and submitting them if they believe HN is lacking what they perceive it to be proper content. I will vote something up is based on the quality of the article (whether it's technical news or not), if it has not already been submitted recently and if the article will lead to an informative/intellectual discussion. If it only has one of those criteria, then I'm less likely to upvote it when there's other articles that meet two or all three criteria.
- auctiontheory 13y agoI see many comments here about developers upset about being treated as "just a developer." Well, if you want to be respected as more than "just a developer," you'll need to understand more about the real world. Specifically people. If that doesn't convince you, look at it this way: healthcare is a huge, growing, and technologically behind-the-curve industry. It offers a huge market for your services. Mental healthcare needs better solutions. Also, I have met my share of severally mentally disturbed developers. So this could be any of us we're talking about.
- eshvk 13y agoAgreed. I don't mean to construct a strawman here. However, it surprises me how this is not relevant. Code doesn't exist in vacuum. Ultimately, software engineering is about applying yourself to solve real world problems. Including mental health care. No one crawled out of the woodwork when 7 cups of tea announced their product. Yet the opposition for this is surprising. How does one understand and solve a problem like that unless one is aware of one's society? An interesting problem requires discovery. That requires awareness of the world.
- droithomme 13y agoThe article uses a woman as an example and gives her crimes as: "trespassing, prostitution, drugs, disorderly conduct, petty theft, drinking in public". The petty theft is later discussed as theft from a supermarket, probably of some small food item. As to the others, why should any of them be imprisonable offenses? Drinking in public? Drugs? Prostitution? Trespassing is not breaking and entering, which is reasonable as an imprisonable offense. Shouldn't trespassing be an infraction with a modest fine? Back to that food item she took from Whole Foods. In a fabulously wealthy nation, how is it that she has come to need to shoplift food to be able to eat. Is that not a failure of the society as a whole? The proposed answer in the article is to have them committed by some sort of court order and place them indefinitely in a "secure nursing home" facility with an ankle bracelet. That's likely to be more costly than prison since it requires round the clock medical care, and is no better than a prison since they are locked up. I propose a better solution. Decriminalize all of these things, leave this woman alone, and save the $719,436 it cost to imprison her for minor and non-offenses. The article also makes the claim, "If someone decides he wants to walk around naked, or cannot give his name to a police officer, the likelihood is that he will end up in jail." If police are arresting people without probable cause or even reasonable suspicion, then it is the police that are acting illegally here. You are not required to identify yourself to any police officer just because he asks, and if he asks without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (it depends on the state which one is the threshold), and you refuse to state your name, then he can not arrest you for that sole reason. If he attempts to do so, it is false arrest, and you have the right under the law, upheld by the supreme court, to use any necessary force to resist illegal arrest. Regarding walking around naked, that is permitted or tolerated in some areas such as nude beaches. There are also issues where people ask why it is that it is legal for men to go topless, yet is criminal for women to go topless? Should not the law apply equally to both men and women? That is a reasonable question and there is no answer that justifies this discrimination that is not intrinsically sexist. Is that what we want? What is so wrong with even total nudity? There is an old man in Barcelona who is well known for going about completely naked, wearing only his tattoos, pierced foreskin and often a full erection. The police do not bother him. http://chrisrako.blogspot.com/2007/05/naked-man-of-barcelona.html http://chrisrako.blogspot.com/2007/05/naked-man-of-barcelona... Has Spanish society collapsed as a result? Is it obvious he should be in prison as The Economist advocates as common sense? Or consider the Jainists, many of who walk about India naked because of their religious beliefs. Are they criminals as well? http://s781.photobucket.com/albums/yy95/phuongvien_bucket/Doc1.jpg http://s781.photobucket.com/albums/yy95/phuongvien_bucket/Do... I propose that public nudity and refusing to give your name to police when they have no cause to ask it are both fundamental rights of man and that any society which denies these rights is tyrannical and any person who denies these rights is an enemy of humanity.
- phren0logy 13y agoI am an HN regular, and a forensic psychiatrist. Every day I work with mentally ill people who have been charged with crimes. I don't have much to add here except to say thanks for taking an interest. The mentally ill and the incarcerated are two of the most deeply marginalized groups in our society. It's nice that someone outside of our world is thinking about them.
- gruseom 13y agoWell, I wish you would add more. You'd surely have more of value and experience to say than almost anybody here. But I hope that doesn't sound demanding--I really appreciate your comment.
- phren0logy 13y agoI'd be happy to say more, but probably the most important thing people can do is read the article. Lack of adequate services for the mentally ill is a huge issue. In the absence of services, they often end up behaving oddly enough for someone to call the police, leading to arrest. More and more often we see families who are relieved that their loved ones are arrested just to get access to treatment. That seems like a real shame, and often their needs are a bad fit for the correctional system. I work in a forensic hospital, and most of our patients come from jails. They often do not get very good care there. Private hospitals are largely closing their psychiatric units, because they don't make money. More and more, state or county funded hospitals and clinics are the last stop, and those (as mentioned in the article) are popular targets for defunding when the budget gets rough. It's a bad situation. At any rate, I'll check in again in the morning if anyone else has more questions.
- grahamburger 13y agoMy aunt is in that situation. She is severely mentally ill and homeless. She was in a shelter until a few months ago, no one has heard from her since. No one else in the family can afford to get her treatment, and she wouldn't comply even if we tried - she doesn't know she's mentally ill, she thinks her delusions are reality. We would all be relieved if she landed in jail as long as it came with some treatment. She is very intelligent, though, and she is not using drugs or alcohol, so she may never get herself in enough trouble to land in jail. Committing people to treatment against their will sounds like a bad idea just begging for abuse, but what else can we do? In what world could she actually be taken care of? I don't know the answer.
- ceautery 13y ago"...taking something without paying at Wholefoods Market; but when two security guards came after her and she thought they were attacking her, she fought back. This led to a felony charge for robbery." I'm very curious about Melissa's case now. Shoplifting ain't felony robbery, obviously, and over-aggressive security staff have been known to injure or kill people[1][2], so "thought they were attacking her" is a legitimate concern. [1] - http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/ex-guard-convicted-shot-paralyzed-shoplift-suspect/article_194c01f7-2d05-5f64-ab89-f3eb506c408d.html http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/ex-guard-convicted-sho... [2] - http://jezebel.com/5967072/woman-shot-dead-by-walmart-security-guard-on-suspicion-of-shoplifting http://jezebel.com/5967072/woman-shot-dead-by-walmart-securi...
- ZeroGravitas 13y agoHow about all reporting of sentences including a) the cost of the trial, and b) the cost of the sentence?
- DanBC 13y agoThe article doesn't mention the diagnosis of "Personality disorder". This is a difficult and controversial diagnosis, but it's important for this kind of article. We'll hear about people who don't take their meds (this thread has such comments) but these people aren't the main problem. People with a probable diagnosis of PD are the problem. Some numbers from the mostly rural UK county of Gloucestershire: Population is roughly 800,000 people. There are about 4,500 people on the books of specialist MH services at any time. There are about 2,000 people with a probably psychotic illness. There are about 2,500 people with a probably mood disorder. There are between 20,000 and 30,000 people with a probable personality disorder. Looking at the psychotic and mood disorders, and putting it very simply, you hospitalise for a short time while you stabilise the illness and sort out the meds. Then you release the patient back to the community with intense support from community workers (daily, weekly, monthly visits). You give an easy route back into services when these people need it. You also provide vocational support - help people back into work and to integrate back into society. Now look at what happens to people with a personality disorder. There's no real treatment. This used to mean they were specifically excluded from treatment - turned away from specialist MH services. That doesn't happen anymore, but there's not much that can be done. And behaviours are often much closer to "bad" than "mad", and so criminal justice is involved a lot more than MH services. Here's a harrowing Grauniad article (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/mar/30/prisonsandprobation.mentalhealth http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/mar/30/prisonsandpro...) (contains description of self harm and suicidal behaviour) > On the day Diane Kent set herself on fire in her cell at Low Newton prison, County Durham, two months ago, she had already tried to hang herself twice and asked a prison officer to take away her lighter because she was scared of harming herself. According to incomplete prison records, her request was refused. This woman's burns were so severe she was kept in a medically induced coma for 5 weeks. Women who attempt suicide by arson are sometimes put in prison (http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8389188.Woman_locked_up_for_arson_suicide_attempts/ http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8389188.Woman_locked_up_for...) for endangering life. Here's another example, again traumatic reading. (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/03/prisonsandprobation.mentalhealth http://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/03/prisonsandpro...) And this is in the UK where we have much better services than the US. God only knows what it's like over there.