U.S. SOLUTION FOR MANY MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IS TO IMPRISON, NOT TREAT

On Jan. 31 and Feb. 5, The Ledger carried op-ed columns by Cathy Hatch
and Risdon N. Slate. They each dealt with the imprisonment of the
mentally ill.

America's criminal-justice system routinely processes mentally ill
people through its so-called correction facilities, otherwise known as
prisons.

Occupying prison cells are 2.3 million people, making the United
States the No. 1 prison nation in the world, which in turn causes
America to have the most mentally ill people in prison cells of all
other nations.

For centuries, mentally ill people have been the pariahs of society,
feared, loathed, abused, warehoused in "snake pit" asylums and state
mental hospitals - 19th- and 20th-century versions of London's
infamous Bedlam of Dickens' time.

Because New York state was unable to sufficiently modernize and reform
its system of state mental hospitals, it closed them. Outpatient
clinics took their place, and jails and prisons claimed the overflow.
In New York state "insanity" is the most difficult defense to make
because of an 1893 court ruling that established a legal test called
"The McNaughton Rule," which asks only one question: Did the defendant
know the nature and quality of the act committed? If so, the defendant
is not insane.

How does such a 19th-century anachronism survive despite modern
medical knowledge and practice that renders it a dinosaur? It's
because the law and its minions are as Mr. Bumble suggested in
Dickens' tale of Oliver Twist. Perhaps less of an "ass" and more of a
chameleon, which would rather blend into and remain an
indistinguishable part of the existing legal environment than disturb
it.

My 50 years of New York state experience at the bar and on the bench
provided me with an up-close-and-personal window of observation from
which to view the passing scene. It's not pretty and poses the
question, "Does society give a damn?"

Sherman Moreland

Lakeland