Involuntary Commitment
Can dangerous behavior really be reliably predicted? If so, what should be done about people judged dangerous when they haven't yet committed a crime? What is the role of mental health professionals and involuntary commitment in balancing the need to protect society with the need to champion the liberty of the individual? Get the answers in this week's podcast by The Sanity Squad.
The Sanity Squad – Involuntary Commitment
The Sanity Squad is composed of 4 mental health professionals, Neo-neocon, Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, and Siggy.
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3 Comments
1. B Dubya:Gee, didn’t Tom Cruise do a movie about that..future crime..of course it took clairvoyants to make the plot work, and in the end, a man was wrongfully convicted…
Guess we’ll just have to stick with the premise that if I observe criminal behaviors from you, I’ll make you account for what you did, not what I think you might do.
What is the three strike rule in criminal sentencing if it is not an attempt to incarcerate a habitual criminal for futue expectations of criminal behavior?
Apr 25, 2007 - 9:06 am 2. david still:Easy. Not high school so you figure a student possible threat, dangerous, you tell him to be examined. If determined help needed and he refuses, then kick him out of your college…law suits? Easy. You pass regulation stating that to stay in your college he needs to comply with the rules (including this, just passed).
Apr 25, 2007 - 11:01 am 3. Jenny Hatch:http://www.naturalfamilyblog.com/archives/000846.html
Dr. Peter Breggin
Quotes:
“So what was needed? Police intervention. Almost certainly, the police were hampered in taking appropriate actions by being encouraged to view Cho as a potential psychiatric patient rather than as a perpetrator. It’s not politically correct to bring criminal charges against someone who is “mentally ill” and it’s not politically correct to prosecute him or to remove him from the campus. Yet that’s what was needed to protect the students. Two known episodes of stalking, setting a fire, and his threatening behavior in class should have been more than enough for the university administration to bring charges against him and to send him off campus.
Police need to be encouraged and empowered to treat potentially dangerous people more as criminals than as patients. In particular, men stalking women should be handled as definitively as any perpetrator of hate crimes. Regardless of whether the victims want to press charges, the police should. Cho shouldn’t have been allowed to get away with it a second time.”
Jenny Hatch
Apr 26, 2007 - 6:28 am