What determines if you go to jail or a mental facility?
What determines if you go to jail or a mental facility?
Say you murdered your wife, friend, or whatever… What will determine if you go to jail or a mental facility?
What is the difference between a prison and a mental facility?
My opinion! if you kill someone you should go to jail for the rest of your life, no matter what is wrong with you! So WHY do they send people to a mental facility instead of jail?
Oh and by the way… When i say mental facility. I mean a prison mental facility.
Well, if I responded to the murder scene and found you with the body while wearing that cheesy hat, I would probably take you to a mental institution. . .
Seriously, first keep in mind that mentally ill and legally insane are two very different things.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) will give you the symptoms of all the mental illnesses.
But to be legally insane is a simple test – do you know the difference between right and wrong?
Take Bundy for example, a serial killer. Surely he was mentally ill but he was not legally insane. Why? Because he knew that killing the women was wrong. How do we know that? Because he hid the victims of his crime, he took steps to hide his involvement in the crime; therefore he knew what he was doing was wrong.
There are a lot of mentally ill people in prisons. They may be there because of their mental illness but they knew what they were doing was wrong. The basic assumption is, if you know it is wrong but cannot stop, then go get some help.
If you plead insane, and the jury accept that there is something psychologically unstable about you, then you’ll be sent to a mental facility instead. The reason why this is done is because an insane person might have been compelled to commit his crime by forces beyond his control… because he’s mentally unstable, he might have murdered, stolen, or vandalised, "Unintentionally." The voices told them to do it. Maybe an insect was in their brain and was controlling their movements.
Their sentence, therefore, is a little less harsh than what it usually can be.
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Well, if I responded to the murder scene and found you with the body while wearing that cheesy hat, I would probably take you to a mental institution. . .
Seriously, first keep in mind that mentally ill and legally insane are two very different things.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) will give you the symptoms of all the mental illnesses.
But to be legally insane is a simple test – do you know the difference between right and wrong?
Take Bundy for example, a serial killer. Surely he was mentally ill but he was not legally insane. Why? Because he knew that killing the women was wrong. How do we know that? Because he hid the victims of his crime, he took steps to hide his involvement in the crime; therefore he knew what he was doing was wrong.
There are a lot of mentally ill people in prisons. They may be there because of their mental illness but they knew what they were doing was wrong. The basic assumption is, if you know it is wrong but cannot stop, then go get some help.
References :
To be sent to a mental facility, you would need to show that you are legally insane. This test is not as simple as you might think, and has been the source of much debate over the years, especially between lawyers, who want a definite conclusion about whether an individual is sane or insane, and psychologists, who prefer to think of insanity in varying degrees of mental illness.
Originally, legal insanity required that a person couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong. If a guilty party had even the slightest notion that their actions were wrong, they were not considered insane. This was later expanded to include irresistible impulses, actions that an individual knows are wrong, but can’t stop from occurring.
More modernly, states have begun recognizing that the line between sanity and insanity is not so clear. Today, it is common to see courts allow for an insanity ruling if the individual only has great difficulty in distinguishing between right and wrong, or great difficulty in controlling impulses. However, this is not the only measure. Many states still follow the traditional rules that require complete lack of ability to tell between right and wrong or control impulses.
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if you meet certain criteria and plead temporary insanity or just plain insanity you can avoid jail, but you have to be examined by a state approved psychiatrist to see if you meet that criteria, if they deem that you do you go to mental health facility and if they deem you are of sound mind and sane then you go to prison.
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Usually, a person’ life and background will be verified. They check to see if any situations have occurred that would prove that person is mentally insane. If there were childhood occurrences, or if that person has been seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist they can speak with them and verify there files as well. Also, like others have mentioned, if the person pleads insanity, and there’s sufficient proof (as mentioned above), then they will deem fit that the person go to a prison mental institution as opposed to prison.
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