Thread: Civil Commitment?????

I guess I don't qualify.

Just sound like a broken record anyways.

Glennifice,

For those who don't know, here is a good explanation of Civil Commitment:Civil Commitment

I just want to help clarify what I think is your very valid point. There are two aspects of antisocial crimes:

1. The violation of laws which makes the perpetrator a criminal subject to punishment in accordance with the law.
2. The reason the person broke the law. If the perpetrator has a treatable mental illness that caused his/her behavior it may behoove society to enter the person into a treatment program to rehabilitate the person into a contributing member of society. This is very important when discussing recidivism. Is it society's reponsibility to try to heal what has been determined to be a diseased mind?

I don't know how I feel about taking a serial rapist or pedophile or an arsonist under the wing of society in an attempt to heal them, to exorcise the demons that have siezed control of the mind of an otherwise valuable member of the community. I was burned out of the second floor apartmeent I was renting when Gary, the guy on the third floor lit the house on fire because his girlfriend refused to move out with him. The arson detective told me that Gary was the culprit but there wasn't enough evidence to arrest him. It seems that Gary set his mother's car on fire when she refused to give it to him. Gary also lit the building in which he used to work when his boss refused to raise his pay. While I can understand that Gary may have been the victim of some mental illness, I understood only that my 8 year old and 6 year old stepdaughters were asleep in their beds in the back bedroom of our apartment when Gary set fire to two bags of trash outside the back door of his third floor apartment, about ten feet away from my kids. When I was awakened by a stranger who kicked my door in after he saw the blaze from the highway two miles away, I grabbed my wife and stepdaughters and got them safely to the street. I wasn't at all concerned about Gary's possible rehabilitation as I threw him off the third floor porch.

In most instances I oppose vehemently the death penalty. However, in some instances a person has proven himself to be less than a person. In some instances a person turns out to be nothing more than a tumor living in and on the body of society. In some instances it seems the best way to treat a sort of cancer is to surgically remove the malignant tumor before it can metastasize.

Brad

Well I have a completely different view on the issue, kinda.

This issue in particular, but others such as the recent "I don't like Mondays" thread, re-enforce for me the complete uselessness of our crime and punishment system in the Western world.

How long have we been locking up criminals to "protect society"? 600 years? 800 years? And how effective has it been? As far as I can see, not at all. Sure, the particular person is taken off the streets, but have we eliminated murder, rape, theft, paedophilia, etc from society? No, from what I can see. What was Einstein's definition of insanity?

The surest way to reduce or eliminate a behaviour is to understand the root causes of a behaviour, and treat it as best you can. It could be a long and time-consuming process, which at best could lead to a person being completely rehabilitated, and at worst could not work at all. If we were serious about improving our society as a whole, and not just band aiding for political expediency, or refusing to think about it because it is "too distasteful" or whatever, we would be giving serious thought to why we feel the need to have prisons and death penalties, and what we could do as a whole to move society forward.

James.

i was going to mention the article in the economist, but it's already been brought up.

jimbo, you are the numbers man, so you probably have much better understanding if the crime is actually being reduced. but i don't think crime will ever be eradicated completely.
just look how things that never were a crime, or even were thought of absolutely necessary (pedophilia and domestic violence) are now criminalized. may be they are offset by uncriminalizing other things like homosexuality, but i definitely see a moving target here

Actually, I have no idea whether crime rates in general are increasing or decreasing. I have only been involved in a few studies, and they are only local to the areas in the studies (Chicago, Brisbane, Stockholm etc.). In those the baseline crime rate is fairly stationary once you account for seasonal fluctuations and other environmental variables.

Interestingly, however, social interventions are associated with decreased rates of certain types of crime (property crimes, public violence and disorder crimes, for example) in those studies. There is also evidence that these types of crime (particularly drug-related ones) shift their geographic intensity to areas where the social interventions are not implemented. These movements and reduction in rates are not related (statistically) to changes in punitive policies in our studies.

There is an increased push within Government (at least in Australia, but in other parts of the world as well) to take a non-punitive approach to crime reduction based on studies such as these.

I am not saying that there will ever be a day where we do away with prisons. However, I think we could do a lot, lot better by our (typically most marginalised) citizens than what we have now. And I firmly believe society would benefit as a whole if we did so.

James.

Jimbo AKA Armchair-Moses,

What has been tried that worked? What has not been tried?

What is your proposed solution?

Well, community courts, restorative justice, early intervention programmes, those "take them to a ranch in the US and teach them to love horses" programmes, peer and community mentoring programmes, there are several non-punitive, treatment-based programmes that have been shown to be effective in certain cases. In the end, one less person just thrown away into a prison is a victory in my book.

My solution is to stop immediately thinking of prison and punishment as the only answer. Look at each case. Spend money on treatment programmes - treatment as the first priority, prison as a last resort.

From little things big things grow. A journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step. Where there is a will there is a way. He's not heavy, he's my brother!!

James.

I don't know whether commitment is legal or not in the US. If it is, then it -could- be based on psych evaluation upon conviction, and seen as protection of the person itself and society, and not an extension of the sentence. Pedophiles have a high recidivism rate so the idea is not without warrant.

I agree with Jimbo that we should try to figure out how to prevent crimes from occurring in the first place.

That said, I don't think pedophiles should ever be allowed out again without chemical castration at least. Preventing is not possible with such persons anymore, and they have already proven that they cannot restrain themselves. The best solution then is to make sure they cannot go for a repeat offense.

Actually its pretty common where someone serves time in State prison for a crime and gets out and then the federal system goes after him on federal charges or after prison time either state or federal they go after him on administrative charges.

well locking them up doesn't seem to have worked in California.

Opening California cell doors can free up needed budget money -- latimes.com