The Criminally Insane
The Criminally Insane

Author: Terence Thornberry

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1979-04

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780226798189

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The Criminally Insane is the largest scale in-depth follow-up study on mentally ill criminals yet to appear. This book challenges the assumption that inmates of maximum-security mental hospitals are extraordinarily violent and questions the necessity for maintaining maximum-security institutions which currently house some 15,000 persons in the United States. In 1971, 586 patients were released from a Pennsylvania maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. They were not considered officially "cured," but a federal court held that their commitments had been unconstitutional. Through exhaustive examination of hospital and police records and interviews with hospital administrators and the subjects themselves, Thornberry and Jacoby assess the processes by which the patients had been retained in confinement, the impact of their release upon their communities, and their ability to adjust to the freedom of community life. The authors demonstrate that the patients did not display a significant level of violent behavior during confinement, nor did they pose a major threat to society after release. In fact, their social and psychological adjustment to community life is shown to have been comparable to that of non-criminal mental patients. Yet despite these findings the subjects had been retained in maximum-security confinement for an average of fourteen years because they were predicted to be violent and "dangerous" to society. The authors explain this inaccuracy by a process called "political prediction," in which clinicians avoid any potential risks to the community, the reputation of their hospitals, and their careers by consistently overpredicting dangerous behavior. The Criminally Insane will stimulate response from professionals in a wide variety of fields, including law, criminology, psychiatry, and sociology, and from anyone concerned with society's responsibility to the mentally ill offender.

Psychology And Social Policy
Psychology And Social Policy

Author: Peter Suedfeld

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2019-03-25

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1317740297

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This work explores the application of psychological data and theories to controversial policy issues such as racial and gender inequality, violence and criminal justice. The book also asks whether psychology really has relevant expertise to contribute. First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Mentally Disordered Offenders
Mentally Disordered Offenders

Author: John Monahan

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1489903518

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In its narrowest sense, "mentally disordered offender" refers to the approximately twenty thousand persons per year in the United States who are institutionalized as not guilty by reason of insanity, incompetent to stand trial, and mentally disordered sex offenders, as well as those prisoners transferred to mental hospitals. The real importance of mentally disordered offenders, however, may not lie in this figure. Rather, it may reside in the symbolic role that mentally disordered offenders play for the rest of the legal system. The 3,140 persons residing in state institutions on an average day in 1978 as not guilty by reason of insanity (see Chapter 4), for example, are surely worthy of concern in their own right. But they represent only 1% of the 307,276 persons residing in state and federal prisons in the same period (U. S. Dept. of Justice, 1981). From a purely numeric point of view, the insanity defense truly is "much ado about little" (Pasewark & Pasewark, 1982). The central importance of understanding these persons, however, is that they serve a symbolic function in justifying the imprisonment of the other 99%. The insanity defense, as Stone (1975) has noted, is "the exception that proves the rule. " By exculpating a relatively few people from being criminally responsible for their behavior, the law inculpates all other law violators as liable for social sanction.

Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990
Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990

Author: Brian Albright

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2012-11-08

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1476600422

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During the second half of the 20th century, landmark works of the horror film genre were as much the product of enterprising regional filmmakers as of the major studios. From backwoods Utah to the Louisiana bayous to the outer boroughs of New York, independent, regional films like Night of the Living Dead, Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Evil Dead stood at the vanguard of horror cinema. This overview of regionally produced horror and science fiction films includes interviews with 13 directors and producers who operated far from mainstream Hollywood, along with a state-by-state listing of regionally produced genre films made between 1958 and 1990. Highlighting some of the most influential horror films of the past 50 years, this work celebrates not only regional filmmaking, but also a cultural regionalism that is in danger of vanishing.