"The Homeless" -- a libertarian-communitarian hybrid class with special privileges?
Yesterday's post about society's denial of mental illness drew some very thoughtful comments which reflect the apples-versus-oranges, libertarian-versus-communitarian nature of this debate. I'm not even sure it's a debate, as people have such widely diverging views which come from different directions.
Are these people -- those belonging to dysfunctional, unwashed and hallucinatory classes -- suffering people who need help? Or are they to be treated as full citizens with all rights and responsibilities thereto pertaining?
This touches on the fairness issue, which breeds an enormous amount of resentment (much of which remains unstated and unacknowledged). I worry that by a process of unwitting collusion, society has created a class of people who are considered beyond the law, and specially privileged (albeit in a de facto manner). When ordinary taxpaying citizens perceive that in the case of some people, the ordinary remedy of calling the cops does not work, they are likely to resent those people. (This is also a frequent complaint about illegal aliens, but that's another topic.)
Ironically, it was never a deliberate goal of society to create any "special privilege" for the mentally ill. It's just that because the mentally ill are incapable of being law-abiding in the normal sense, it strikes many of us as "unfair" to punish them for the same crimes we would expect normal people to be punished for. That is not mere bleeding heart liberalism, but a traditional view grounded in an endangered form of thinking once known as common sense, and it is a major reason people like that used to be placed in mental hospitals.
Analysis is further complicated by the standard which Xhristopherus mentioned in the comments -- whether or not the mentally ill person poses a threat to himself or others. Now, I think it could easily be argued that someone who is incapable of being law-abiding does in fact pose a threat to himself or others, but that runs afoul of the libertarian view that indefinite civil commitment for criminal behavior is unconstitutional punishment. And I can see the logic of that; after all, if a sane shoplifter would normally get probation or a 30-day sentence, why should the insane shoplifter be locked up possibly for the rest of his life? What is being missed here is that the insane shoplifter is not being locked up as punishment, so it's apples and oranges to compare the two.
But anyway, the mindset has prevailed that we should not put the insane shoplifter in a mental hospital, because that would be unfair. Seen in isolation, most people tend to go along with that thinking. So, while we have done away with the idea of committing the insane, we have not done away with the traditional view that because the mentally ill are incapable of being law-abiding in the normal sense, they should not be punished. This is aggravated by the very serious problems that the mentally ill face in prisons, where they in fact do not belong. The problem is increasing, though, because prison is the only place for the mentally ill to go once they have committed crimes serious enough that they cannot be ignored. So activists agitate constantly for their release. As they should, because in prison not only are they victims of other inmates, but in a matter reminiscent of the way they were treated in medieval times, they are punished for their symptoms:
Prison staff often punish mentally ill offenders for symptoms of their illness, such as being noisy, refusing orders, self mutilating or even attempting suicide. Mentally ill prisoners are thus more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, including isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis.
"Asking prisons to treat people with serious mental illness is pushing round pegs into square holes," said Fellner. "People who suffer from mental illness need mental health interventions, not punishment for behavior that may be motivated by delusions and hallucinations."
Well, that's all good and fine, but the problem is that they don't get mental health interventions. Instead they are treated as normal citizens with the same rights as everyone else.
In this way, the communitarian and libertarian viewpoints have been unwittingly combined to create a hybrid monster. This has had a ripsaw effect of creating a specially privileged class, much to society's detriment.
As a practical matter, until they commit serious crimes, you can't lock 'em up, and you can't put 'em away.
Whether you're a communitarian or a libertarian, that's unfair.
MORE: Just to be more clear, I should restate the above this way.
As a practical matter, until they commit serious crimes, you can't imprison them [because isn't fair to treat insane people as criminals], and you can't commit them [because it isn't fair to put insane people in mental hospitals].
We are treating the mentally ill as mentally ill when it comes to criminal accountability, yet as normal citizens when it comes to their mental illness.
And we call them crazy....
posted by Eric on 04.26.10 at 11:07 AM
Comments
The friction is because the issue that you describe is an issue of moral problems. No one wants to talk about morality much anymore, and so it goes unacknowledged. You've pretty much it the issue though without actually using the word.
A court deals with moral problems. A doctor/hospital deals with problems of sickness. You do not go before a judge and get probation or a prison term for getting cancer, you go to a doctor. You will go before one for shoplifting, and if it turns out that you are not capable of determining right from wrong (the legal definition of insanity, and the only one the judge cares about), you will go to a psychiatric hospital instead.
Of course, many of the homeless, for all of their psychiatric and substance abuse problems, are of course legally sane. Their offenses are still moral problems, and should be treated by the judge, with medical/psychiatric treatment as an adjunct to their punishment.
This is the issue at hand. All too many of us want to treat alcoholism or drug abuse or mild schizophrenia or other mental problem as the cause of the offense, instead of the person who commits crimes. An alky or a junky or a "sex addict" can, by and large, still distinguish between right and wrong - they simply do not care, or they feel the reward for their behavior outweighs the potential for punishment, and THAT is the moral problem that the judge and the justice system are there to treat.
Aristotle covered this issue 2400 years ago. Pity that we've forgotten him.
Anonymous · April 26, 2010 11:39 AM
These were a great couple of posts, and the comment from Anon. above made me want to applaud.
Julie · April 26, 2010 1:49 PM
Good point from anon, except please bear in mind that I am not talking about alcoholics or drug addicts, but the dysfunctional, unwashed, hallucinating derelicts who (whether they have additional substance abuse problems or not) are clearly not sane, but are being treated as if they are. The man in the Seattle store who attacked the clerk had been arguing with the batteries for over an hour is IMO a classic example. Treating someone like that as a normal person when he clearly is not is delusional.
And while it's another topic, back in the old days, alcoholics used to be able to live in flophouses.
You have no idea how much it revolts me to say so, but perhaps a requirement that one take medications that allow him/her to be "responsible before the law" that being the minimum level required? I hate the idea of people being forced to take meds, because ... well... who shaves the barber? I'm sure by many definitions I'm a raving loony which is impairing my ability to work at a day job, which of course, impairs society's "production". I don't like that kind of mental slope.
OTOH if you have some basic level of functions -- say the ones you'd allow for a child to be considered "functional" -- can feed self, maintain minimal levels of hygiene and understands property rights (yes, yes, that DOES mean half of our government gets locked up... and given meds) and can medicate to achieve it, it might be okay, for a while. I still don't like it.
I think the best deal would be "private property rights". In areas that other people have jurisdiction over, if caught being a nuisance/danger/issue, people can request that individual be medicated in manner adequate to the condition.
Yes, yes, it's still bad, but it would protect the innocent from the strange interaction of those who can't control themselves and either keep those individuals off such spaces or keep them medicated.
I will add I know people who live with full on auditory hallucinations and prefer not to take meds because it impairs their work/art/experience. I think this is entirely their prerogative provided they keep enough of a handle on what's "real" for other people (vs. for them) and don't infringe other's rights.
Gah. Not making any sense. And this IS a very difficult topic.
About the original post, the problem is, as was noted above, morality.
Traditional morality is mean. Nevermind that it's a series of rules that people have worked out over millennia for how a society and its people should act, it often feels mean. Making someone work to get out of the gutter is just mean.
New morality is all about being "nice", not being "mean" and outcome is rarely, if ever, considered. It's usually considered gauche and rude to even mention that the outcome is really horrible.
Putting people in a home against their will is "bad". You'll have advocates calling the ones who would lock them up "Dr. Mengele" and worse, nobody wants to be called Nazi. Especially people who went to the right schools and want to get invited to the cocktail parties.
Look at Africa, we've given them billions (trillions by now? I'd bet it was trillions in today's dollars over my nearly 50 year lifetime) and what have we accomplished?
It's worse now than it was.
Zimbabwe is only the most obvious example. It went from a bread basket to a famine- and inflation-ridden hellhole.
Giving money to despots to distribute is about stupid, and yet we do it over and over again. Or even worse, we give it to the UN to give to dictators (shudder).
Doing what Africa needs is mean (basically, going in and taking over for decades while trying to teach them to be a democracy) and smacks of colonialism.
Can't let them have frankenfoods or DDT, never mind that they save lives, they make good leftists uncomfortable.
So in order for our media, political, social and intellectual betters to feel better about themselves, a whole bunch of people have to get really screwed.
In this end of civilization at least you get the funny with the endy.
Joe Biden is VP. Whenever things get really bad, I think about that buffon as VP.
Sure, moral rules are developed for people who comprehend them and generally tend to obey them whether they agree with them or not. But that simply doesn't apply to schizophrenics. Telling them to obey the rules is like telling a quad to run.
I've been trying to get a book published on the subject, a combination of memoir of what happened to my brother and scholarly history of deinstitutionalization. The libertarian organizations are too committed to their ideology to admit that it failed, and trade publishers aren't taking anything that involves risk. You can read the first few chapters of the book here.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
The friction is because the issue that you describe is an issue of moral problems. No one wants to talk about morality much anymore, and so it goes unacknowledged. You've pretty much it the issue though without actually using the word.
A court deals with moral problems. A doctor/hospital deals with problems of sickness. You do not go before a judge and get probation or a prison term for getting cancer, you go to a doctor. You will go before one for shoplifting, and if it turns out that you are not capable of determining right from wrong (the legal definition of insanity, and the only one the judge cares about), you will go to a psychiatric hospital instead.
Of course, many of the homeless, for all of their psychiatric and substance abuse problems, are of course legally sane. Their offenses are still moral problems, and should be treated by the judge, with medical/psychiatric treatment as an adjunct to their punishment.
This is the issue at hand. All too many of us want to treat alcoholism or drug abuse or mild schizophrenia or other mental problem as the cause of the offense, instead of the person who commits crimes. An alky or a junky or a "sex addict" can, by and large, still distinguish between right and wrong - they simply do not care, or they feel the reward for their behavior outweighs the potential for punishment, and THAT is the moral problem that the judge and the justice system are there to treat.
Aristotle covered this issue 2400 years ago. Pity that we've forgotten him.