crime and social responsibility

[babybird67]

I was researching some figures for another thread and came across this startling statistic: around 70% of prisoners in this country suffer from two or more mental disorders. Compare this to the related figure of 5% of men and 2% of women of the general population.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsg-04334.pdf

That is a phenomenal statistic.

Surely this points to one of the keys to improving crime statistics would be to improving mental health care in this country? Why is mental health care so much neglected and marginalised? If we could help people deal with mental illness better surely we could decrease the crime rate as I don't think a figure that high occurs by accident. It is very sad that unwell people are being put in prison when perhaps better health care would be the answer.

Jen

[Phil H]

Didn't the Victorian's understand that quite well?

I thought that was why they were so interested in the skulls of murderers (hence some of the paster casts around in places like the "Black Museum"). Was it an aspect of phrenology?

Perhaps our forebears were not so daft after all? Even if they worked on instinct rather than whatr we call "science".

Phil

[Hatchett]

hI,

I think you are so right Jen. Even today they is an unease when talking about any form of mental illness. Even depression is not openly expressed. Why that should be in this day and age is a disgrace. Even in the courts there is a certain difficulty with mental disorders.

That coupled with the tragic decline of the National Health leaves a lot of mental health sufferers isolated.

It is certainly bad today. Take that back to 1888 and you can understand why there are so many decidedly odd people milling around Whitechapel, some of them potentially dengerous, others just barely able to look after themselves.

If you walk around the streets of certain parts of London and other big cities at night, you sometimes wonder if anything has really changed, apart from degree.

Best wishes.

[Limehouse]

I was researching some figures for another thread and came across this startling statistic: around 70% of prisoners in this country suffer from two or more mental disorders. Compare this to the related figure of 5% of men and 2% of women of the general population.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsg-04334.pdf

That is a phenomenal statistic.

Surely this points to one of the keys to improving crime statistics would be to improving mental health care in this country? Why is mental health care so much neglected and marginalised? If we could help people deal with mental illness better surely we could decrease the crime rate as I don't think a figure that high occurs by accident. It is very sad that unwell people are being put in prison when perhaps better health care would be the answer.

Jen

Some of this mental illness stems from a large number of prisoners being alcohol and/or drug dependent. I think, instead of being given a prison sentence, the criminals were sentenced to alcohol and drug dependency programmes, they might re-offend less often.

Also, recently in the paper, it was reported that a high number of people in prison have gone through the care system. Often, children in care have had a very dysfunctional childhood and have very low self-esteem. They often do not attend school or attend a series of schools and so often have low educational achievements.

Finally, a very high number of people in prison have considerable literacy difficulties, adding to their problems when they leave prison and try to get jobs. There are literacy programmes in prisons and this problem is being addressed - but again, many people are transient, even within the prison system and so do not get a proper and consistent educational experience.

I believe it is very important to rehabilitate people whilst in prison so that offenders are less likely to re-offend. We could learn a lot from our friends in northern Europe when it comes to lloking after the most vulnerable in our society.

[Natalie Severn]

Meanwhile the bankers go on robbing us and dodging the law and the MP's who used our taxes to pay for second homes and moat cleaning are able wriggle out of going to prison altogether.
Now are these people mentally ill? Probably not .But the frightening thing is---they make the laws that put other criminals inside.

[EddieX]

I was researching some figures for another thread and came across this startling statistic: around 70% of prisoners in this country suffer from two or more mental disorders. Compare this to the related figure of 5% of men and 2% of women of the general population.

The statistics can be explained by two facts. The first is that anyone sentenced to a custodial sentence is obliged to be investigated by an army of trick cyclists with little else to do. The second is that it is probably perceived by the prisoner to be in his interest to be declared bonkers by these shrinks. The prisoner will see a declaration of his madness to be a one way ticket to either freedom or a more cushy billet at a hospital prison ward.

[Errata]

As a mentally ill person, and someone who has never been to jail, I can tell you that I am EXTRAORDINARILY lucky girl. Because I was diagnosed as a child, I never had to figure out something was wrong with me. I never had some sort of non mentally ill state to cling to. I never was under the impression that the peculiarities of my mind were normal. Clearly the down side is that I have never not been sick, and I have no idea what normal feels like, but in many ways I was fortunate.

Jared Loughner killed five people in Arizona, and shot Gabrielle Giffords in the head. And none of his friends were surprised. They knew he would do it someday. He was a violent paranoid schizophrenic and they knew it. His parents knew something wasn't right, but because he felt safe with them his symptoms were never as bad around them. Jared Loughner's friends killed those people in Arizona. And people don't understand that because they don't understand how mental illness feels.

People don't feel mental illness they way they feel physical illness. Bipolar people don't feel bipolar. They don't feel depressed, they feel tired. They don't feel manic, they feel good. Everybody feels tired, everybody feels good. Why would they realize that what they feel is different? We don't see our behavior the way others see it. We don't notice that we haven't left the house for a month. We don't notice that we are engaging in riskier fun. It's exactly like vision. One day you notice you can't read the blackboard anymore. It may seem sudden, but it took more than a year to get to that point. You never "feel" your vision get worse. One day you realize that you are getting more headaches, and you eye doctor changes your glasses prescription.

Most bipolar people I know have spent some time in jail. Mostly minor stuff stemming from things that seemed like a good idea at the time when they were manic. Streaking, vandalism, some fights. We aren't inherently dangerous. Mania is a literal chemical high. We do what high people do. Some people like my fiance, have no idea whats going on, but they know that they seem to need liquor or drugs more than others. It's because they are self medicating a disease they don't even know they have. They are reflexively changing their neurochemistry the only way they know how. So they get DUIs, sometime with fatal consequences.

I know two people who are in jail and will never get out. One guy had mania so bad he hadn't slept in 5 days. He was paranoid, and hallucinating, and he freaked out and shoved his friend off the roof of their apartment building. And one girl had a gun in her mouth when her mother walked in and started screaming. So she shot her mother in the face. She was so intent on dying that she lashed out at the person who was delaying her. She never knew she had severe depression. She got it right after she killed her mother. She turned the gun on herself but she was shaking too hard and survived the head wound. We were 15.

Jared Loughner still hasn't gotten it. Before the shooting people knew he needed help, but a: no one helped him and b: no one made sure HE knew he needed help. He still doesn't know. Our brains tell us when are bodies are betraying us, but our brains are eerily silent about their own betrayals. When he was about 16 minute changes began in his brain. No one noticed behavior changes untill a couple years later. A few more years later, people are recognizing him as dangerous. A year after that he goes on a killing spree. But he doesn't know he changed. It happened cell by cell.

Are we mentally ill people responsible for our actions? Absolutely. But you have to understand that we don't see what other people see in us. We have to actually be trained to see it. Like people who say "um" a lot when they talk. They don't hear it. Until someone points it out to them, and then they have to work harder than they have worked on anything else in their life to hear it, and then stop saying it.

I have put friends in the hospital. And some of them don't talk to me now, but they are alive, so I'm cool with it. We only see the illness when it becomes so aggregious that we cannot ignore it or justify it. Without outside help, we only see when we have a gun in our mouths (hopefully). Or when we have hurt someone terribly. Or when we have done something so antithetical to our nature that we can't even explain it. And even then we can usually rationalize. I mean, it is far more likely that you drank too much or had a bad day than that you are mentally ill.

The best thing anyone has every done for me was to literally break into my house, grab me and tell me "I know you think you're okay, but you aren't. Either you make a doctor's appointment right now or we are calling the ambulance." I hadn't been outside in a month. I hadn't showered in nearly as long, and I had spoken to single soul. I was tired. My friends loved me enough to break about seven cardinal rules of dealing with me to get me help. And I cannot tell you how much that means to me. It helps that they paid to fix the window they broke out

Jared Loughner's friends had a responsibility as human beings (much less as friends) to get him help. Whether he wanted it or not. They should have hog-tied him and taken him to a hospital for a 72 hour hold. I have no idea why they didn't. He wasn't going to suddenly figure out that he was sick. He wasn't going to "snap out of it". He wasn't going to become LESS dangerous. Clearly no one else was taking care of the problem. Clearly he didn't know he wasn't okay. 5 people died because the only people who realized the extent of this poor kids problem could not be bothered.

Once we get it, once we know that we are not healthy, that we have problems, we are responsible for ourselves. A person is responsible for not seeing their doctor. They are responsible for not taking their meds, for not getting treatment. They are as responsible as a person who has a loaded gun on their coffee table. If a neighborhood kid accidentally kills himself with it, you can't say you didn't know that could happen.

Mostly we are not violent. We are inappropriate, somewhat casual with property, a little handsy perhaps. We aren't murderers. We aren't rapists. No illness creates that. I get so tired of people literally backing up when I tell them I am Bipolar. I'm not going to hurt anyone. And anyway, I am treated and medicated thank you. I am not abnormal. I have been this way my whole life. This is normal. This is part of who I am. I am no different than a diabetic. I have to have regular treatment to not get really sick. Do you back away from diabetics?

Mental illness is rarely sudden, and it is rarely spectacular. It's a mood. A whim. A way of looking at things. A strange comment. An odd gesture. We partially live in another world. Schizophrenics probably more so than others. But even Bipolar people, we dream a lot. We are often sort of elsewhere. 1000 yard stare stuff. We are thinking of cabbages and kings and what ifs and things that were said 4 hours ago. We feel differently. We think differently. Not dangerously. Look at John Nash. His illness allowed him to visualize complex systems no one else could. The dreamy states of depression created Alice in Wonderland, The Raven, and The Old Man and the Sea. Attention Deficit Disorder is quite possibly the single greatest influence on modern computing. And if you ever want to see a really awesome "mental illness" look up synesthesia.

I'm going to conclude my now thesis paper length post by saying this. The first step to solving mental health issues is to stop being afraid of us, and stop being afraid of getting involved. If someone you know is threatening themselves or others, call the cops. If someone is really struggling, take them to the hospital. Call an ambulance, a pastor, sit down with their family. You cannot assume we see it. Make sure that you don't let someone die, or kill someone else. Don't condemn someone to fear and misery and ignorance because you are afraid you might be wrong. You might be. If they understand that you love them, hopefully they will understand. But if not, no one in this society has ever been harmed by someone wanting to help. Unlike the victims in Arizona.

[TomTomKent]

Part of the problem stems from some people not quite understanding mental health practices. In my experience this comes in three main forms;
1) Those who think they are better placed to diagnose their families issues based on what ever they read recently than a medical practitioner (oh yes, Timmy has atouch of adhd, its probably the aspartme in his drinks). Which gives ammunition to;
2) Those who do not believe cognitive sciences are science, psychology is a con, and it is just rich people oppressing the poor by making excuses. (Seriously, on the Skeptoid forum there is somebody who rolls out that idea on ANY medical subject. Does fluoridation affect teeth decay when added to water at 3ppm Phi? Oh, science was "infiltrated by psychologists" and mental health issues are probably just allergies? Ok...
3) Those who, through no fault of their own, have never been taught how peer review science and controlled studies work. Most people dont work in a field that requires this knowledge, so when they read headlines about healthcare, mental or otherwise, they may not spot some warning signs for how the sensational headlines may not match the actual paper published by researchers. Most people simply wont have a frame of reference for cognitive behavioural therapy, the placebo effect, etc. But, with a lot of good writers out there offering ley introductions to first principles, like ben goldacre, mark porter and dr karl, this is improving.

Just my thoughts. If people understand it is not "just an excuse" and realisee treatment of addiction can help prevent further offences in some, not all,cases and that rehabilitation is more useful to society than punishment for revenge in some cases, we may get a cheaper, more effective prison network in a few generations.

[Rubyretro]

One thing that I would be interested to know is at what point into their sentences were prisoners diagnosed with mental health disorders ?
When they were sentenced, or after they had done some time, or was the study carried out on a sample across the board ?

I only ask, because I think (I haven't read the book for some years) George Orwell concluded in 'Down and Out in Paris and London' that most of the
homeless on the streets suffered from sort of mental disorder too. However, whether this was the reason that they ended up as 'tramps' or whether they developed mental disorders as a result of a poor diet lacking in vitamins and minerals, constantly interupted sleep, and general abuse from society, wasn't clear.

I think that most people have a potential to develop a mental disorder if pushed over the edge by a dramatic event or substance abuse, and some people are more fragile than others. Living in Prison seems a like a very highly stressful experience and might well cause prisoners to become deeply depressed or suffer from paranoia etc.

[Limehouse]

Meanwhile the bankers go on robbing us and dodging the law and the MP's who used our taxes to pay for second homes and moat cleaning are able wriggle out of going to prison altogether.
Now are these people mentally ill? Probably not .But the frightening thing is---they make the laws that put other criminals inside.

Hi Norma

I quite agree - although some of the MPs and Lords are now finally finding their way to jail - but not nearly enough of them.

Wealthier people commit different crimes from most of those in prison and they have clever lawyers to get them off the hook. Then they look down their noses at the criminal population in jail.

[Limehouse]

Hi Errata

I was very moved by your post. Thank you for being so open - thus helping us understand your illness.

I think your testimony illustrates how mentally ill people end up in prison. They are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and they often end up in lifestyles that are transient and lack stability. Often they are corrupted and used by others for criminal purposes.

Offending damages society and creates victims. We have to try to understand how to put right what has gone wrong so that fewer vicitms are created and society is less damaged.

Prison is an ideal opportunity to address offending behaviour and protect the public from offenders but the process needs to be strengthened so that mental illness is identified and treated and addictions are treated - drug or alcohol tretment programmes should be part of their sentence.