Introduction
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0192-0812(03)80014-4 |
| Published date | 10 December 2002 |
| Pages | 1-5 |
| Date | 10 December 2002 |
| Author | William H. Fisher |
INTRODUCTION
William H. Fisher
I just spent sixteen days in the jail house
For the crime of havin' no dough
Now here I am back out on the street
For the crime of havin' nowhere to go
J. R. Robertson - "The Shape I'm In"
At one stage in the evolution of complex societies the social control and
management of deviant behavior was relatively straightforward. Rule breakers
were incarcerated, ostracized, exiled or in some cases, executed. The evolution
of law and medicine, especially psychiatry, offered a range of new definitional
approaches to deviance of various kinds. On at least a formal level, efforts were
made to differentiate between deviant behaviors that could be labeled as
"criminal" and others that seemed to be the result of mental illness. Significant
evolution in the structures for dealing with these two modes of deviance has
gone forward over the last two centuries, but like many boundaries, the division
of these two sets of behaviors is quite porous. Indeed, nationally visible
struggles over the appropriateness of the insanity defense and the identification
of what differentiates criminal intent from the product of mental illness
highlight the difficulties of applying these definitions.
In the mid-20th century, America and other Western nations began a grand
social experiment, seeking to treat increasing numbers of persons with mental
illness in community, rather than institutional settings. This effort provided a
context in which the management of deviance displayed by persons with
mental illness would become particularly nettlesome. Homeless persons
Community-Based Interventions for Criminal Offenders with Severe Mental Illness,
Volume 12, pages 1-5.
© 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
ISBN: 0-7623-0972-5
To continue reading
Request your trial