Unit 7 Essay: Civil Commitment and the Mentally Ill

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In today’s American Justice System, the legal definition of Insanity as is understood by Heilbrun, Fortune, Greene and Nietzel (2006), is that the legal terminology referring to a mental illness or a brain defect that is known to exist in the defendant during the commission of a crime, if is considered with other factors such as the inability to understand why the behavior is illegal or the inability to conform to the legal behavior. The major rulings that deal with this type of issues are the Brawner Rule and the M’Naghthen Rule. The Brawner Rule states that offenders cannot be held accountable for their illegal acts if he or she doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand the charges or lack the ability to meet the rule of the law and the justice system. The M’Naghten Rule states that offenders may be deemed not guilty by the reason of insanity if they do not understand what they did was wrong. Both of these rulings require that the conditions must be a result of mental defect of some sort. (Greene et al, 2006) Although hard to believe, the Insanity Defense is not used as often as a lot of people think, and the main reason why is because this type of defense is very hard to prove. For example; back in 1991, the results of a major eight-state study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that less than 1% of the county court cases involved insanity defense, and that out of all of those cases, around 1 in 4 was successful. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry, 1991) The most common issues with this type of defense often arise because of the frequency that the legal definition of insanity differs depending on the state, and the fact that there is minimal accurate testing equipment and procedures to test for insanity. When it comes to dealing and treating with the confinement of mentally ill inmates is finding mental

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