Insanity and Irresponsibility: Psychiatric Diversion in the Criminal Justice System (From Psychology of Crime and Criminal Justice, P 133-144, 1979, Hans Toch, ed. -- See NCJ-118234)

• NCJ Number: 118239
• Author(s): T S Szasz
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 12 pages
• Sale Source: Waveland Press, Inc.
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Some of this chapter was presented in March 1977 at a symposium on "Crime and Punishment" at the Harvard Law School.

Annotation

Psychiatry and the criminal justice system should be totally separate systems, such that psychiatry is not used as a means of social control.

Abstract

Psychiatric diversion from the criminal justice system occurs when a person who has committed a criminal offense is relieved of criminal responsibility due to a diagnosis of mental illness as a core element of the deviant behavior. Because the criminal justice system is not willing, however, to let deviant persons live free in the community, they are committed to mental institutions where they remain under "treatment" until the deviance is deemed by the court to be healed. Such psychiatric diversion has nothing to do with modern psychiatry. It is the result of and depends on its psychosocial utility in managing the guilty conduct of certain persons and the guilty consciences of those who sit in judgment on them. Persons who commit criminal offenses should be held responsible for them by the criminal justice system, without reference to any psychological assessment of the offender. Psychiatric services may be sought voluntarily by the offender, but should never be part of the legal disposition. 20 references.