A Critique of the Psychiatric Approach to Crime and Correction

The opinion of psychiatrists can have substantial or decisive influence in the determination of whether an offender is fit to stand trial, whether he is responsible for a crime, and whether he is to be executed or given a life sentence.It can play an important part in the decision whether to place him on probation or to send him to a correctional institution.It can, in many instances, affect the duration of the offender's penal servitude, the choice of the particular institution to which he is sent.his subsequent transfer to other institutions, and his activities within the institution.It can sway the estimate of his suitability for parole or pardon.In jurisdictions having special sex offender laws, the psychiatrist's opinion is usually determinative of whether such an offender is to be dealt with under the customary procedures or under the provisions of these laws.In the latter event, he is released only on the psychiatrist's recommendation, and he can be confined for life.Some psychiatrists have insisted that such procedures should be extended to all offenders.They propose that the law should enable the lifelong incarceration or supervision of any offender, on the recommendation of a psychiatrist, even if his crime were only a minor one.As long ago as 1928, a committee of the American Psychiatric Association, under the chairmanship of Dr. Karl A. Menninger, recommended the "permanent legal detention of the incurably inadequate, incompetent, and anti-social offenders irrespective of the particular offense committed.... ."'Not one of the terms used in this grim scheme was defined.It was not even explained how an "antisocial" offender differs from one who is not antisocial.Not a scintilla of evidence was presented that psychiatrists, or anyone else, could distinguish between incurable and curable offenders.Another suggestion on this order has been voiced more recently by a psychiatrist and a law professor in the following statement, which should occasion alarm in any schoolboy who has fully appreciated the implications of his lessons in eighth-grade civics: ". . .If analysis of the convict's personality indicates that he cannot safely be released, he may have to spend the rest of his life under legal supervision of some kind, even though the only crime he has actually committed was a minor one." 2