Lloyd Vernon Briggs, History of the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1922), 6, has a discussion of Horace Mann's 1830 report to the Massachusetts legislature that many of the insane, instead of being in mental hospitals, where there was some hope of recovery (at least for a few), were locked up in jail cells. And then, Briggs tells us:
Can the reader conceive, after such a report from our legislative body, that it would be nearly one hundred years before Massachusetts ceased sending her insane to prisons and jails instead of hospitals?And we are back to the same incredibly stupid situation. Deinstitutionalization puts lots of mentally ill people out on the streets. Some of them ended up committing serious violent crimes. Juries, while they might be sympathetic to a mentally ill person who committed a minor crime, are not at all sympathetic to someone who has committed murder or rape, and partly out of fear that "not guilty by reason of insanity" will turn this person back to the street again, send such people to prison.
Marx wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. I'm having trouble getting much of a laugh out of this repetition of stupidity, so I'm going to have to say that this is first time repetition instead.
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