Relationship of the Mental Health Power and the Criminal Law Power of State (From By Reason of Insanity, P 179-185, 1983, Lawrence Zelic Freedman, ed. - See NCJ-90616)

• NCJ Number: 90617
• Author(s): N Morris
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 7 pages
• Sale Source: Scholarly Resources, Inc.
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Original version of this paper was prepared for delivery at the conference 'Psychiatry and the Law - Reaching for Consensus,' held in Chicago on 12-13 October 1979.

Annotation

The insanity defense should be abolished, because it produces inefficiency and injustice, which result from the confusion and overlapping of the Nation's two distinct powers in criminal law and in mental health.

Abstract

The four occasions when the overlapping and confusion occur are the inquiries regarding a person's triability, (competency to stand trial), the inquiries regarding the person's responsibility for the crime, discussions of the issue of punishability, and decisions regarding the appropriate treatment of mentally ill criminals. These are all separate questions, and the Nation's two distinct powers should be used separately to deal with them. An ambivalent attitude toward the mentally ill criminal has produced the difficulties with the principle of total separation of these two powers. Using the principle of separation, no special plea of incompetency to stand trial should exist. Similarly, there should be no special defense of insanity to a criminal charge. In addition, mental abnormality should remain relevant to the sentencing of convicted criminals. Moreover, special institutions for the criminally insane should not exist, since they are doubly stigmatizing institutions that seem to combine the worst features of prisons and mental health institutions.