In the popular press, the idea is generally to 'lock them up' - but as the Daily Mail notes, it's not so straightforward:
Tough justice? What we need is effective justice... and that doesn't mean locking up thousands of sad, mad people to watch TV in overcrowded jails
The aim is not simply to lock ’em up in their cells for up to 23 hours a day – even if, to quote our ‘tough’ Justice Secretary, they’re sitting there ‘watching the Sunday match on Sky Sports’. No, the aim is to protect the public by preventing re-offending which, with a re-offending rate of 65 per cent, it is clearly not doing very well. It is said there are three types in prison; the sad, the mad and the bad. Of these, only the really bad – at most 15 per cent of the prison population – need to be there because they present a risk to the public, and their offending must be challenged.Or, as the philosopher said:
"I was rather interested in my fellow prisoners who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence – as was shown by their having been caught."
Or, as the Injustice Project would have it:
If one spends any time around prisons, it does not take long before you hear inmates classified as either mad, bad or sad. It is a simplistic characterisation, and it carries pejorative undertones, but there is some sense in its development. Of these three ‘types’, two of them, the ‘mad’ and the ‘sad’ are worthy of considerable compassion rather that derision. The third type, the ‘bad’ are often marked by an innate desire to harm without remorse and most people find these inmates more difficult to view with any compassion, though they too are worthy of compassion.The Mad, the Bad and The Sad: They All Deserve Some Compassion - The Injustice Project
This is part of the bigger question of how we view people generally - how we categorise and judge them.
Here's the viewpoint of a psychologist:
I first got my head into this stuff by reading a book by Australian academic Deirdre Greig: “Neither Mad nor Bad. The Competing Discourses of Psychiatry, Law and Politics.” She wrote about the interface between law and psychiatry precisely to acknowledge that the ‘mad / bad’ dichotomy was unsatisfactory to explain it...
So why does this debate exist in developed societies in the 21st century? Well, it is at least partly because the current constructs of medicine do not fully account for the human experience of mental illness or mental wellbeing – it’s known to be about more than medicine. You only need look at the tension surrounding the re-drafting of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual to see this. And it is partly because the law has sought to define legal constructs that account for these primarily medical, not psychological definitions – and we know the law hasn’t done this in the context of what we know about 21st century experience of mental illness. You only have to look at how laws have only comparatively recently considered ‘personality disorder’ as a ground to detain someone under mental health law.
Our ‘insanity’ laws were written in the first half of the 19th century. Just think what science has taught us about medicine and mental health since then? Just think what we have learned about the role of psychology and sociology in the development of mental health problems; think what we know about our politics and society and how we respond to mental ill-health … can it be the our laws are right and remain current? But then attempts to reform them are extremely difficult as the previous Government found during the first decade of this century.
More to the point of the title of this piece, we hear “mad versus bad” as if they are opposites of some kind. in fact they are two inherently unrelated constructs from two different paradigms: medicine and law. So this misunderstanding leads to us rarely seeing any debate about criminal suspects who are mentally ill that acknowledges that someone could be both mad and bad. Even if someone was suffering from a mental health problem at the point where they committed an offence, that illness or disorder does not necessarily excuse them from criminal liability – but it might.
Mad, Bad or Sad – Mental Health Cop
Here's another psychologist:
Personality disorders are a contentious issue in psychiatry. How many are there and how reliable is their diagnosis? Are we just medicalising bad behaviour and social inadequacy. How should medical and criminal justice sectors divide responsibility? This is part of Professor Wilson's series of lectures.With a very good overview in his talk here:
Mad, bad or sad? The Psychology of Personality Disorders - Professor Glenn D Wilson - YouTube
Finally, how much of this lazy categorisation is due to the professionals?
Jay Doubleyou: a critique of psychology
Jay Doubleyou: how normal behavoiur becomes a mental disorder
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