Analytical Examination of Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization

An Analytical Examination of Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization

Flavia Spiroiu

CPHL 406: Contemporary Moral Issues 2

Professor: Paul Los

April 6, 2006

In “The Crime of Punishment”, psychiatrist Karl Menninger resolutely affirms that crime is preventable through psychiatric treatment, whereas punishment is a brutal and inefficient remnant of the past. His conviction is that the social sciences have proven that individuals are not responsible for their conduct, and that human actions are determined by circumstances, therefore to punish someone entails penalizing them for something beyond their control. Accordingly, he advocates treating offenders like the mentally ill, whom he asserts are only slightly different from healthy individuals, and regards them as having a medical problem for which they should receive ‘treatment’ in order to become rehabilitated. He does concede that wrongdoers should make amends for losses inflicted upon victims, however argues that no further penalty should be exacted, as any sanction that is not purely compensatory (in his view) equates to vengeance or retaliation. In essence, Menninger claims that since men are not accountable for their actions, society should not be culpable of the "crime of punishment" (Menninger, 1966).

As I was initially introduced to this thesis, I contemplated: does this imply that various dark, dangerous and debilitating forces have shaped susceptible individuals, rendering crooks incapable of resisting the impulse to do wrong? If this could be infallibly verified, then any type of punishment would incessantly be wrong and unthinkable. What Menninger is indirectly, yet ostensibly declaring is that if an individual desires, as an example, a leather coat, gold chain, or a new car, they are compelled to seize the object of their desires, but given that they have no control over such behavior, they must not be held liable for it. In other words, craving is equivalent to compulsion and desire is equivalent to duress. On a different note, if crime is sickness and punishment is crime, then punishment too is a sickness, and thus we can observe a self-contradictory character to Menninger's thesis, which sought to replace penal sanctions with involuntary psychiatric "treatments." Indifference to fundamental rights to liberty and property, rejection of personal responsibility, and a pervasive erosion of justice and order are the predominant and most evident consequences of his notion. In view of this, and on account of my contention that the coercive control of illegal behavior ought to be a moral and political, not a medical or therapeutic, function, I considerably oppose involuntary psychiatric “treatment”, and I believe that it is inimical to individual liberty and responsibility, to the rule of law, as well as to the very existence of a free society.

In an effort to validate such coercive psychiatry, Menninger, similar to numerous other social scientists and psychiatrists, regards the cause of crime as a scientific mystery or natural and spontaneous outcome generated by factors we are unable to completely comprehend or identify, while he circumvents the word “choice” and speaks as an alternative of precursors, “influences,” and correlates of crime, such as the offender’s previous sense of helplessness or hopelessness (Szasz, 2002). In addition to maintaining that guilt and accountability are illusory, he also labels wrongdoers as “mentally ill”, an assessment which, firstly, not only exempts such persons from responsibility for the deleterious consequences of their own demeanor, but it secondly, further gives psychiatrists the legal power to commit individuals involuntarily to “mental hospitals,” and thirdly, promotes the erroneous view that diseases of the mind and diseases of the brain are identical.

In contrast to this unreliable estimation, and in accordance with Rational Choice theories of behavior, crime is a moral choice, not a contagious disease or mechanical compulsion, and thus law-infringing behavior should be viewed as an incident that occurs when an offender makes the choice to risk violating the law following deliberation of his or her own personal condition and situational factors. Secondly, it is worthwhile to note that it is only because psychiatry is allied with the state that deviance from psychiatric norms is defined as disease and psychiatrists have the legal power to coerce mental patients and innocent persons. They deprive these individuals