The Smoking Gun

For several years now, I have been asserting that there is a definitive link between mental illness and crime. To recap, repeat offender crime is caused by one of two factors:

1) A small number of repeat offenders have a personality disorder. Think of this as a willful desire to break the law due to bad character.

2) A large number of repeat offenders have mental illnesses that do not qualify for an insanity defense under Florida law, yet affect their behavior and cause criminal behavior.

This second view is very controversial: If criminals are simply “bad characters,” it would justify increasingly harsh punishment. Incarceration would then serve the dual purposes of protection of the public and retribution However, if some criminal are bad characters and others are not, we have a problem: Harsh punishments will not deter the mentally ill, and retribution becomes and act of cruelty.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report published in September of 2006 exposes the level of cruelty - and ignorance – prevalent in our society. While most of the public thinks that harsher punishment is the solution to the social problem of crime – to “teach them a lesson” and other such nonsense, the reality is that we are behaving like prisoners who hurt others without remorse: Our society is quite bluntly put, cruel.

• 45% of federal prisoners have mental health problems.
• 56% of state prisoners have mental health problems.
• 64% of local jail inmates have mental health problems.

This stunning document was produced by the United States government’s own Bureau of Justice, not some “bleeding heart” group. They used professionally accepted definitions and standards:

“Symptoms of a mental disorder were based on criteria specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV).” - Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, page 1, September 2006.

One final thought: The incidence of mental illness was probably understated because many facilities and many inmates refused to participate.