A word to those who, from a false altruistic standpoint, insist that the
insane criminal requires no different treatment from that which the
ordinary insane patient does. This is very true in the case of prisoners
who develop mental disorders which have no relation to crime or
imprisonment. These do not require special measures of treatment. It is
likewise true of the psychoses of the accidental criminal, but it is
entirely different with the criminal who suffers from a degenerative
prison psychosis. Here we are not dealing with individuals who tend to
dement, who have little or no conception of whether they are in a prison
or in a hospital. In short, we are not dealing here with paretics or
senile dements, who, although being at the same time prisoners, remain
subject to the same unavoidable lot of the paretic or the senile dement.
The habitual criminal who suffers from a degenerative psychosis, unless
he is in a stupor, is constantly on the alert for a chance to escape. No
matter how delusional or hallucinated he may be, he always manages to
keep in mind that the thing which he most desires is to be free from the
hands of his captors, and anyone who has had to deal with this class
will bear me out in this. The shrewdness with which they carry out their
escapes is amazing, and some of the more depraved ones do not hesitate
to commit serious assaults in order to gain their freedom. Here,
measures other than those used with the ordinary insane patient are
required.
Now as to special hospitals for insane criminals which certain States
have. Of course the same objections, namely, as to the delay in getting
the patient under treatment and the danger of transfer, etc., hold true
also here; but these hospitals, it seems to me, have the additional
disadvantage that they necessitate the segregation of all insane
criminals, irrespective of whether they suffer from a recoverable
psychosis or from a dementing process. In other words, here we have an
admixture of cases who unfortunately fell into the hands of the law
because of some mental disorder and who certainly should be confined as
any other patient in an ordinary hospital for the insane, and patients
in whom the crime and mental disorder are expressions of the same
underlying degenerative defect, and who in a great majority of instances
suffer from recoverable transitory mental disorders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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