The following is from “Jails are no substitute for a mental health system,” an article by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), published at thehill.com 5/20/15:
Using our criminal justice system as a substitute for a fully functioning mental health system doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense for law enforcement officers, who often put their lives at risk when they are called upon to intervene in a mental health crisis. It doesn’t make sense for courts, which are inundated with cases involving people with mental illness. It doesn’t make sense for people who have mental health conditions, who often would benefit more from treatment and intensive supervision. And it certainly doesn’t make sense for taxpayers, who foot the bill for high incarceration costs and overcrowded corrections facilities, and who must pay again when these untreated mentally ill prisoners are released back into society, often in worse shape than when they were locked up…
…Our bipartisan legislation will address this issue by improving access to mental health services for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system, and by providing law enforcement officers the tools they need to identify and respond to mental health issues in the community. It continues support for mental health courts and crisis intervention teams, both of which save lives and money. It authorizes investments in veterans treatment courts, which serve arrested veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, substance addiction and other mental health conditions.
What reasonable person could argue with any of this, correct? It’s a bipartisan bill. So that must mean it’s right.
Wrong.
Franken & Collins argue that police should not have to deal with mental health crises. But what constitutes a mental health crisis? A state of chronic despair and gloom, frequently labeled depression? A perpetual sense of low self-esteem, self-worth or self-confidence? If these are what they mean by mental health crisis, then they’re right. Police have no business becoming involved; that’s not what they’re trained to do, and it’s not what they’re responsible for doing.
But sometimes matters of imminent or threatened violence are involved. This may or may not involve a mental health diagnosis. The police have to intervene at this point, and we want them to do so. Why transfer this responsibility out of their hands and into the hands of psychiatrists, psychologists or social workers?
Mental health professionals, in fact, are legally and ethically required to contact law enforcement authorities when a suicide or homicide is imminent. We don’t delegate those situations to mental health professionals. Mental health professionals, in fact, are understandably required to delegate these situations to the police.
Franken & Collins correctly point out that courts are clogged. They’re clogged for all kinds of reasons. One of the main reasons they’re clogged is people are arrested, tried, fined and imprisoned solely for using or abusing drugs — whether they have harmed anyone else, or not. If your goal is to unclog the prisons, you could start with legalizing drugs. People who initiate force or fraud against others will still be tried and, if convicted, fined or imprisoned. But this will be due to their initiating force or fraud, not because they used or possessed drugs.
Franken & Collins claim to care about taxpayers. Why don’t they lower taxes, then? Why don’t they stop burdening taxpayers with the responsibility of trillions of dollars in government programs, forcing them to take responsibility for other people and situations which are not their responsibility? If your heart bleeds for taxpayers, repeal the welfare and entitlement state, or at least phase it out.
Instead, they propose saddling innocent taxpayers with still more responsibility — specifically, for the mental health of their fellow citizens. They do it through a combination of pseudo-practicality (allegedly costing less in taxes) and emotional/political blackmail. “You’re already paying for extra police and welfare programs? Why not pay for the mental health of people instead?” To which the rational, self-assertive and self-responsible taxpayer should reply: “Why am I responsible for any of them? By what right do you impose that responsibility on me, by force, in the first place?”
Legally enforced counseling/psychiatry is nothing more than a different form of coercion and imprisonment. It’s actually a less honest form, because it purports to be humanitarian, clinical and compassionate, when it’s still run by government-hired, largely unaccountable professionals who have the force of law behind them. Any mental professional worth his or her salt knows that mental, psychological or emotional change cannot and will never occur at gunpoint; it has to be self-initiated, voluntary and self-motivated. Otherwise, it’s a process of going through the motions. This might satisfy the statistical needs of a politician seeking to spend more money on a program, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual, real facts of mental health and stability.
Much is written about the injustice of police today. But police are merely the symptom of a much deeper and wider problem. Police are put in charge to enforce laws. It’s most of the laws we’re expecting them to enforce that are the problem. We have so many laws (1) forcing people to do things government has no right to force them to do (take care of others); and (2) preventing people from doing things government has no right to prevent them from doing (e.g., using drugs), that quite naturally the police — considered against a high standard of what they might and ought to be — are not acting as honorably or rationally as they might otherwise perform. This is because of the nature of the laws we’re asking them to enforce.
Increase “access” to mental health programs run by the government? Good God. Run for your life whenever a politician — or worse yet, a pair of “bipartisan” politicians — starts talking about “increasing access” to anything. That’s the last thing we need, the mentally troubled most of all.
What they’re saying, in principle, is that in addition to being our brothers’ keepers for everything else, we will now be our brothers’ keepers for their mental health, as well.
Anyone who knows anything about the mental health profession is aware of all the subjectivity involved. This is not to say that there are no objective principles for psychology; but there is little widespread agreement, at this time, about what those principles constitute. (I have written extensively on this subject, in several books and thousands of online articles.)
“Mental health” and “treatment” courts? Are we to believe that government can properly define what consists of mental health, and distribute people to the appropriate institutions? Does anyone want the government anywhere near such determinations?
Courts of law can serve only one purpose: To identify and weigh evidence in support of guilt or innocence of people charged with initiating physical force or fraud against others. Mental health “trials” or “hearings” are the stuff of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and George Orwell — not a free or rational society.
This proposal has the potential to cost the country even more of its lost individual rights, on top of the untold trillions in dollars it will spend on top of what the government already spends, borrows, expropriates and unjustly/inefficiently redistributes.
The fields of psychiatry and psychology have a long way to go in figuring out what makes human beings tick and function. It’s not necessarily the case that these fields will ever have all the answers.
What we know for sure is that intervening, intrusive government — typically represented by hacks or quacks with Franken’s mentality — should not be allowed anywhere near our minds or bodies. It already does enough damage.
Be sure to “friend” Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1