Aletta Fischer

Miss Thomson
AP English Language and Composition
1 February, 2018
Treatment over Execution
The amount of people in jail in the United States with a severe mental disability is more

than the entire population of Trenton, New Jersey: 356,268 people (Swanson). According to the

Washington Post, 77 percent of suicide attempts in a Washington county jail were done by

someone with a “chronic psychiatric problem” (Swanson). Often times, people with a mental

disability who commit a crime are not completely aware of the situation. This does not mean that

they should walk away from court with no consequences. After all, what they did was against the

law. This also does not mean that they should be executed or locked up in a prison for the rest of

their lives with no available treatment. Someone with a mental illness who has committed a

crime should be held accountable for their actions, but should be given proper treatment.

While severely mentally ill criminals should not be executed for their actions, they should

still face the consequences because what they did was against the law. Whether or not they are

fully aware of what they did, it has been done and there is no undoing it. Especially regarding

violence and/or murder, what this person did cannot be undone regardless of awareness. In

Massachusetts, a person is not held responsible for a crime if they have a mental disorder. That

being said, this means that that person was rendered “unable to fully comprehend the wrongness

of their actions or they are unable to fulfil their duties in court” (Goldenberg). They will be found

“not guilty by reason of insanity” (Goldenberg). While it is agreeable that if someone is not able

to comprehend the wrongness of their actions, their case should be dealt with differently, it is not

agreeable that said person be found not guilty. The Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines “guilty”
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as “justly chargeable with or responsible for a usually grave breach of conduct or a crime.” By

that definition, someone who has committed a crime is guilty, no matter the state of their mental

health. Not to mention the victims or families of the victims of their crime. If a mentally ill

person is driven to violence and murders someone, regardless of their intention, the loved ones of

the victim would want justice.

One important point to mention is that not all people with severe mental illnesses are

criminals, nor do all criminals have a mental illness. Despite many misconceptions, only 4% of

violence in the United States is committed by someone with a mental disorder (Sifferlin).

Actually, someone with a mental disorder is more likely to be a victim of violence. This may

seem difficult to believe since every news story about violence mainly focuses on that person’s

mental stability. In a study on 400 news stories done by researchers from Johns Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health, 40% of them said that a mental illness can increase the risk

of violence, while only 8% said that most people with a mental illness are not violent (Sifferlin).

Many people think that mental illnesses are a risk for violence. Schizophrenia was ranked as the

“most violent mental illness” (Sifferlin), but only 1.1% of Americans suffer from it (“NAMI”).

When someone is convicted of committing a violent crime, their mental health is immediately

questioned. A mental illness does not make someone a criminal.

In some cases, these people are not even aware that what they are doing is wrong. For

example, Keith Robinson. Robinson was a paranoid schizophrenic who shot and stabbed 5

innocent people. While being confronted in court, he claimed he had heard voices telling him

about the coming apocalypse. He understood this as a message for him to “liberate as many souls

as he could” (Bookman). He believed he was doing the right thing. Before committing this

crime, his parents were concerned for his mental health. They noticed that their son was acting
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strangely, so they asked the state to help him. He was never granted treatment. Instead, he was

executed. Another example would be a man named Andre Thomas. Thomas carved out the

organs of his four year old son, his estranged wife, and her thirteen month old daughter because

he believed it would get rid of their inner demons. He believed that he was given this task by

God. He, like Keith Robinson, believed he was doing the right thing. He, also like Keith

Robinson, was executed. Even though what these men did was horrible and criminal, they were

not fully aware of the severity of their actions.

This violence can be prevented with proper treatment. As mentioned before, Keith

Robinson’s parents had asked the state to help their son after noticing that he was acting

strangely. He was never given treatment and ended up harming people. Another example of this

would be Lorenzo Martinez. Martinez was sent to a hospital psychiatric ward twice in the

beginning of 2013 (Hausman). He was there because he had been sitting outdoors for days in the

freezing cold, refusing to eat food claiming that the “government had poisoned it”, and telling his

friends and family that the world was going to end soon (Hausman). He had only been in the

hospital for 18 days. Two months later, he went back to the hospital of his own accord, this time

for only six days. He was sent home to his family. Eleven days after he was discharged, he

grabbed the steering wheel of the car while his mother was driving, sending the car into the other

lane right into a semitrailer, killing his mother (Hausman). Martinez should not have been

released so early. He evidently needed more help than he was given. The hospital should have

made sure that he was ready to be sent home. According to his grandmother, Martinez was never

violent (Hausman). Instead of being feared, these people should be given help to take control of

their illness and achieve recovery. However, often times, prison is the inevitable result.

American jails and prisons contain an estimated number of 356,268 people with severe mental
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illnesses. That is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state psychiatric

hospitals: 35,000 (Swanson). There is something to be said whenever the number of individuals

in prison with a severe mental illness is higher than the number of people in a psychiatric

hospital. Without proper treatment, mental illnesses can get progressively worse which can

possibly lead to violence. With the proper treatment, not only can violence be avoided, but death

as well. Adults in the United States living with a mental disorder are more likely to die 25 years

earlier than others, mostly due to treatable medical conditions that are never treated (“NAMI”).

Also, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 18-22 veterans with Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder take their own lives. With medication and medical attention, these suicides can

be avoided. For some people with a severe mental illness, suicide seems like their only option.

Without available treatment, they feel like they don’t have any way to escape themselves.

Sometimes, someone with severe untreated depression turns to violence because they feel like

that is the only way they will be seen, whether it is violence to others or violence to themselves.

If those who have resulted to violence with a mental disability would just be treated as necessary

to the severity of their illness, so much violence could be avoided as well as suicides.

Treatment should be given to those who may have poor mental health in order to avoid

violence and in order to avoid the suffering of them and others. Most people who have a mental

illness are not necessarily violent. In the rare cases that they do act out on violence, they should

be treated and punished according to the severity of their actions. They should not be locked up

or executed with no available treatment.

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Work Cited

“Guilty.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guilty.

“NAMI.” NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness, www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-

Health-By-the-Numbers.

Barton, Laura. “How Does Mental Illness Affect Criminal Behavior?” HealthyPlace, 23 Oct.

2017.

Bookman, Marc. “13 Men Condemned to Die Despite Severe Mental Illness.” Mother Jones, 24

June 2017.

Goldenberg, Keren. “Mental Illness in Criminal Cases -.” Keren Goldenberg: Belmont, MA

Lowell, MA Criminal Defense Lawyer.

Hausman, John S. “Mental Illness and Criminal Justice: Lorenzo's Story and Other Tragedies.”

MLive.com, 17 Dec. 2013.

Morse, Stephen J. “Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.” Scholarly Commons.

Sifferlin, Alexandra. “Most Violent Crimes Are Wrongly Linked to Mental Illness.” Time, Time,

6 June 2016.

Swanson, Ana. “A Shocking Number of Mentally Ill Americans End up in Prison Instead of

Treatment.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 30 Apr. 2015.

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