Mental illness, criminality, and citizenship.
نویسندگان
چکیده
Recent efforts to address the needs of mentally ill persons arrested for minor crimes have focused on providing treatment and controlling petty criminal behavior, most notably through diversion programs that shunt offenders from the criminal justice to the mental health and substance abuse treatment sys tems.1' 2Diversion programs have been partially suc cessful in bridging the gap between treatment and justice systems, but high recidivism rates reveal that they have been less effective in supporting the com munity integration of persons who carry the dual stigma ofmental illness and a criminal record.3,4 Consider the following scenarios. A mentally ill homeless woman is arrested for criminal trespass af ter collecting redeemable bottles from a trash con tainer behind a funeral home. A mentally ill man is arrested for disorderly conduct for urinating at the entrance to a supermarket. He admits to having to urinate but denies doing so at the store entrance. "I would neverdo that in my store," he says. A mentally illman isarrested for breachofthe peace for lecturing loudlyon Jungian psychology at a bus stop. In each of these cases, the justice system referred the individ ualtoadiversion program forbehavioral health treat ment. This response represents a far more enlight ened outcome thanthatof locking up individuals for petty crimes directly related to their mental illness, but it doesnot address two keyissues implicit in our
منابع مشابه
Mental illness, criminality, and citizenship revisited.
In a 2000 editorial in The Journal, Rowe and Baranoski introduced the concept of citizenship as a theoretical framework for developing programatic and policy initiatives aimed at the community integration of persons with mental illness and criminal justice histories. Rowe and colleagues defined citizenship as a strong connection to the rights, responsibilities, roles, resources, and relationshi...
متن کاملPublic perceptions of risk in criminality: the effects of mental illness and social disadvantage.
We examined how different types of mental illness elicited varying levels of predicted criminality and compared this with factors which might also elicit a negative response, specifically, a criminal history and social disadvantage. A sample of 243 participants undertook an anonymous, online experiment. Each participant was exposed to one of six vignettes: three involved mental illness (schizop...
متن کاملCan Political Participation Prevent Crime? Results from a Field Experiment about Citizenship, Participation, and Criminality
Democratic theory and prior empirical work support the view that political participation, by promoting social integration and pro-social attitudes, reduces one’s propensity for anti-social behavior, such as committing a crime. Previous investigations examine observational data, which are vulnerable to bias if omitted factors affect both propensity to participate and risk of criminality or their...
متن کاملWho Is More Dangerous? Comparing the Criminality of Adult Homeless and Domiciled Jail Inmates: A Research Note
The criminality of 100 homeless and 100 domiciled jail inmates was compared. Homeless jail inmates were significantly more likely than domiciled jail inmates to be mentally ill, to be arrested for nuisance offenses, to have more extensive criminal histories, and to have prior arrests for use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Suggestions for processing homeless offenders are given. Homeless people...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
- The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
دوره 28 3 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2000