Kraichgauer wrote:
I really hope he gets mental health care in prison, because even though the jury didn't give him a pass with his insanity defense, this guy is obviously three or four cans short of a six pack.
The issue is that so many seem to believe that giving someone mental health treatment necessarily means not holding someone accountable for their actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Proper mental health treatments means that individual prisoners and/or suspects who have special needs with regards to mental illness get these needs met. It is about both giving them proper treatment and ensuring the safety of others around them. And in many cases, giving suspects and/or prisoners proper mental health treatments means drastically lowering the possibility that those with mental health needs, which does include those on the autism spectrum, end up causing such violence and loss of life in the first place.
If anything, I think proper mental health treatments make it less attractive to use mental illness as a sort of get out of jail free card. Because then, if someone is classified as mentally ill, they will spend substantial amounts of time getting treated for it along with others who also have severe mental health issues. In most cases they will spend at least as long there as they would in conventional prison. So someone who wants a get out of jail free card is not gonna be inclined to use mental illness. And without these mental health centers, it seems like the possibility of mentally ill suspects getting back on the streets increases, as does the attractiveness of mental illness as a get out of jail free card.