Writes Katie Engelhart in "I Visited the Men Who Live Behind Bars and Can’t Remember Where They Are," about prisoners with dementia.
ADDED: Elsewhere in the article, about a different prisoner, we hear that "his disease leaves him sexually disinhibited," so I don't see how the inability — or purported inability — to remember the rape supports freeing the man. But that's not what the article argues. It ends:
Collectively, the men of the [Memory Disorder Unit at F.M.C. Devens] have murdered, attempted to murder, stabbed, kidnapped, extorted, swindled and brought fear to entire cities. There were victims of these crimes and some of them are still living....
Within the M.D.U., staff members believe that the future of the correctional system lies in more M.D.U.s....
In the meantime, some researchers are proposing a more modest approach: building more “dementia-friendly prisons.”... [I]t seems to require that America’s prisons undergo a strange and maybe absurd conversion: into something that more closely resembles a locked-down, fenced-off, barbed-wire-enclosed nursing home.
As I left the M.D.U., a man was moving slowly down the hallway in a wheelchair...
“Do you like it here?” I asked him.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “But I’d rather be in … oh, what’s it …?” Then he forgot where he wished he could go.
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52 comments:
When you use up your compassion on the guilty, there is nothing left for the innocent.
We do not come equipped with a limitless supply. Triage is required. Cruel, but necessary.
Ex post facto lack of criminal intent. The new M’Naughten.
I bet the granddaughter remembers.
Habeas Corpus - "to have/hold the body"
It says nothing of the mind. I don't care if there's 17 personalities in there, as long as we have the body of the criminal in the proper place - which is prison. They can have a mad hatter's tea party among themselves, just so long as it's behind bars.
What hostage? Dementia equates to a mental vacuum. Put 'em all in a half-way house with decent security (or a low-level prison), as some may be misdiagnosed or violent.
I've thought about this in regards to the mentally ill and their eternal soul. How will the Judgment Seat evaluate them? I believe there's a point where agency and will ends and the disease begins. Anything after that point won't be judged. Whoever they were, good or evil, the evaluation can't be changed after the schizophrenia takes over.
I would say the same here. The rapist was judged and sentenced. The dementia struck afterwards, but there's no changing the judgment that happened while he had agency.
What’s her solution? Throw him out on the street? How is that fair or compassionate? He’s going to be a ward of the state no matter what. The greater crime would be to not keep him in the system, where he’ll get the care he needs.
I'm not at all sure but what many of these prisoners are not better off -- perhaps significantly so -- than they would be if simply warehoused in the sorts of dementia-care facilities commonly available to all but the wealthiest.
My father, 23 years a Navy officer, and a brilliant self-taught engineer, slipped into dementia late in his rather long life. Because of WWII they had married in their 30s, yet still had almost 60 years together. Mum took care of him until a week before he died, and I had the privilege of both assisting and providing respite on a fairly regular basis. It wasn't easy, but it deepened our connections as a family, and especially mine with my father, which were already close.
After so long in prison, that is their home, and though the work of caring for such men is surely not easy, I suspect it attracts the more empathetic from amongst prison staff.
And Mum? After Dad died, she had over another decade, reading 3 or 4 books a week in the modest home they'd owned for over 60 years, gently assisted by my [single] sister who'd moved back in for that purpose. Mum's final act was to request a specific history book she was reading, and when my sister brought it, she was already dead.
Three very different examples of elder care in one vignette -- ALL of them, including the prison, better than what commonly happens.
Tough. Don't care that criminals are behind bars and don't remember the crimes.
Justice has two goals.
Vengance
Keeping law abiding people safe from the criminals
I have little concern about their claimed memories today. Not relative to justice.
Dementia affects higher level thinking skills. The instinct to prey on weaker victims may be latent. Ask Katie if she would leave her young daughter to spend a few hours caring for the guy. Note, the officer specialist has seen these inmates come and go for a long time and isn't buying that it is just dementia.
"We get into difficult metaphysical questions about personhood here"
Sounds kind of NewAge - we get a lot of that ion "normal" society now too
Dementia and brain damage sometimes do affect judgment and behavior in ways that lead to acting out sexually. This is an argument for incarcerating someone like that if they have abused someone, not releasing them as if the justice system itself lacks judgment and memory of the crime.
In what way would releasing them ensure they would magically be cured and not do it again?
A very ugly secret of nursing homes is the degree of sexual assaults that occur but are not prosecuted because the assailant is in some way impaired -- there are also cases where the defense of a competent rapist rests on the argument that his victim is mentally incapacitated. Nursing homes, often also housing disabled youth, are candy stores for predators.
That's how we lost all the women in a living center for the mentally disabled to AIDS. They weren't competent and weren't supervised and were coerced into sex for as little as a pack of gum by a few predatory men infected with the disease in the early days. These poor girls and women lived and died horribly.
If that doesn't stick in your gullet, you have no soul -- or sense of justice. Or any other type of sense.
Now if these folks had just been hung then justice would have been served, dementia would never have developed in them, nor would the tax sheep been required to support them for decades. It begs the question, who is really being punished here?
There's already enough sexual disinhibition in regular hospitals and nursing homes. Old men groping and grasping, suddenly needing "help" to urinate. Ugh.
That's when you send the male nurse in...Yeah whaddya need, buddy?
So many guys are just nasty old shits underneath.
it should matter whether the old man remembered what he did.
no! no it Should NOT!
If The last time gilbar raped a girl, he was SO plastered he has NO MEMORY of it..
Does THAT make it okay?
"In order to punish the version of him that deserves it, you have to take along this hostage for the ride."
Kinda like his victim, eh?
"We get into difficult metaphysical questions about personhood here"
Oh, this again... "Personhood." If we're exploring the possibility that a person isn't a person unless some particular degree of cognition is present - what was Singer's position? It is a consistent, defensible standard that you ought to be able to kill a child up to the point where they have the cognition of a dog? The question isn't "personhood" unless you're looking for a way to euthanize prisoners with dementia - which, I don't know, maybe they are...
ISTM that whether you want to make this decision on the basis of justice, deterrence, or compassion, criminals convicted of violent crimes who develop dementia should stay in prison. People with dementia don't deal well with change. And as for rehabilitation, even if we could figure out how to do that effectively and consistently, we certainly can't say it would stick once dementia sets in.
But it's not about "personhood."
It sounds to me like that last guy is trying to tell a joke, but forgetting the punchline. WC Fields' purported epitaph is "I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
Seems more like an argument for the death penalty than anything else.
There are two basic problems with the idea that you should release dementia patients from prison:
1. Some of these people, even in their current state, are still dangerous. A child molester with dementia may be more dangerous than before since he or she lacks the inhibitions and/or concern of being caught that would have provided some restrictions in the past. Just because you have forgotten who you are does not mean you do not want to do bad things. That may be the only thing that survives intact.
2. As soon as you start giving better treatment to inmates with dementia, inmates will start faking dementia in order to get better treatment. And some of them will succeed. We already see this with "transgender" inmates who get themselves transferred to women's prisons and then take advantage of the situation.
The prisoners may not remember what they did, but you can be damn sure that their victims and the victim's families remember. Reason enough for me to keep these men locked up. Typical NYT, though. They've never met any ne'er do well that they wouldn't wring their hands over.
"So many guys are just nasty old shits underneath."
Just wanted to highlight this. I am thinking about all the stories I read about teachers having sexual relationships with students. Seems like most of the predators in these cases are women, but at 54 memory fails me, so perhaps I am a mistaken nasty old shit. Please don't mistake me for some other nasty old shit.
The phrase “descent into madness” accurately captures many mentally ill people: they get there one step at a time, each one going downhill because it’s easier than ascending into sanity. My wife and I walk Main Street daily in our picture-postcard small town. There we see several men who walk the same streets, ranting to no one and everyone their conspiracy theories, litanies, random psychotic thoughts. How did they get this way? Are they responsible or was it out of their “agency,” to use the hip new word for free will.
My hard side, the side that reads a fire-breathing, temple-cleansing Jesus in the Bible, says they took those steps, always the easiest one at the moment. Lock ‘em up, throw away the key. They’re dangerous to society. But my other side, the “kind” side of me, the one that sees a sheep-petting, dove-eyed Democrat Jesus in the Bible, feels a pang of compassion. “There but for the grace of God go I.”
It’s a tough call with the mentally ill … but you’ve got to get them off the streets.
I know it sounds awful but these people are wastes of air. The solution is not to make them patients but to make them dead.
This is the sort of article that will be followed, eventually, by a sequel article arguing for euthanasia of the demented prisoners on the basis of compassionate care for the incarcerated. And of course arguing that this is very, very different from execution for their crimes.
F.M.C. Devens. That rang a bell with me. It used to be Fort Devens, an Army base in Massachusetts. In the past, I brought my mother there to shop at the commissary. It is interesting to note the many old bases, closed during BRAC in the past few decades, that have become federal prisons.
Boohoo. These vile miscreants are surely even more dangerous after they become demented. Throw away the key.
ISTM that whether you want to make this decision on the basis of justice, deterrence, or compassion, criminals convicted of violent crimes who develop dementia should stay in prison. People with dementia don't deal well with change.
Perhaps not prison, where they could be preyed on by the other prisoners, but definitely in some form of institutional living....do they even have mental hospitals anymore?
#nomorebrooks
"“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “But I’d rather be in … oh, what’s it …?” Then he forgot where he wished he could go."
That's me. Daily. Should I be worried?
It begs the question, who is really being punished here?
I talked about this with my students yesterday. If you have no problem with being forced to live behind prison walls, and have a way of avoiding violence from the other prisoners...where's the punishment? Three hot meals a day, clothes, a roof over your head, color/cable tv in the rec room and a weightroom better than a professional sports team....sign me up.
Bring back chain gangs and breaking large rocks into small rocks.
Recitivism for chomos can be as high as 77%. That's for sexual preditors that prefer young boys. They don't last too long among the general population in prison. In some prisons the pedophiles are kept seperate from the general population. Demntia or not he needs to stay in prison. That's one way we cam make absolutely sure he'll never again rape a child.
Insanity defense becomes (premature) dementia defense?
What if the prisoner can't recall his/her gender?
Do defense lawyers have a Doctor Dementia on speed dial.
FWIW I find myself squarely in the keep them separate from me and mine camp.
My mom's dementia is far enough along that last year we had to put her in a "memory care" unit. Frankly, it is everything they describe about the futuristic prison nursing home without the barbed wire. It is locked down and really fenced off too, although not a perimeter fence as much as the outdoor recreational space doesn't have weaknesses to allow someone to wander off. And while my mom's place is coed; I'd be pissed off if some progressive moron started putting rapist in their with her.
The original crime earned the guilty their imprisoned place in society. They didn't show compassion to their victims. We don't need to become like them but keeping them locked up doesn't make us have less compassion. Our compassion is reserved for the innocent victim.
Reporters used to go into nursing homes and report how they could be better. I guess now a days they rather discuss the success of Canada's MAID program. Funny how that would never be considered a solution for the demented rapists.
Mob boss Vincent 'The Chin' Gigante faked insanity for 30 years - often wandering the streets in his bathrobe and slippers mumbling to himself - in order to avoid prosecution.
I too am against letting men who rape their granddaughters live with demntia in prison, but my solution probably differs quite radically from what the writer of this article would suggest.
Isn’t mental illness a common defense tactic? So a reporter comes to see you and prison. Isn’t it worth the try to claim you don’t remember your crime?
Maybe he learned the tactic from Joe Biden?
"When you use up your compassion on the guilty, there is nothing left for the innocent.
"We do not come equipped with a limitless supply."
Who says we do not have a limitless supply of compassion? How could one "use up" their compassion "on the guilty," (what or who do you refer to?), and have no compassion left for the innocent? That makes no sense. Those who say they don't probably weren't truly compassionate to begin with.
As a society, we have become soft in the head. I don't give a fuck about whether these men remember their crimes or not- their victims surely do, if they survived the encounter.
Keeping such prisoners locked up still has deterrent value, doesn't it? It says to would-be criminals, "commit these crimes and you will be locked up forever, even if you should become demented and no longer remember your crime."
It also serves an important prophylactic purpose. If you start letting people out because of dementia, then it seems assured that a lot of prisoners will attempt to get out of prison by faking or exaggerating dementia. And are victims expected to TRUST that the government will competently sort out who is truly deserving of release on this basis from the fakers? Should they be required to devote more of their future time and emotional energy trying to stay on top of the bureaucrats and other officials who are making such determinations?
People with dementia sometimes lose their natural inhibitions that made them good people. People who were already predators will not be better people with dementia, they will likely be worse. Prisoners with dementia should be in special facilities, those facilities do not need to be in prisons. They just need to be secure.
In my experience, a shitbag at 15 or 25 is a shitbag at 55, 65, or 85, and regardless of health condition.
The time is coming when we simply won't be able to afford to coddle dangerously defective old shitbags.
And FJB isn't the only one.
Is this where MAIDS could help?
I wonder if a violent, horrifying, soul-destroying, life-changing, rape would change Katie's opinion about collateral damage.
Me, I'm trying to figure out what gave the feds jurisdiction to house and maintain such prisoners. Granddaughter rape isn't a federal crime, whether the perp remembers it nor not.
A more careful reading shows that the opinion about collateral damage was not Katie's, but that of the quoted professor. My apologies, sort of, as she is using the academic to garner sympathy for the rapist.
Fuck you, Cookie.
My offender got years off his sentence for allegedly being mentally incapacitated, a lie, then was released even earlier than that (for the fifth time) for "getting a psychology degree" behind bars, after which he went back to fist raping elderly women to death.
The real shocker was that this was the norm.
Care to comment?
Once again Cookie chimes in with a post showing his misplaced compassion: boo hoo for the perp; no mention of the victimized granddaughter. Does he EVER not get the wrong end of the stick?
Most any day you can find a news report of some violent criminal released by some bleeding heart judge or parole board who goes on to kill some innocent.
Eventually our "enlightened" justice system will let them all go free, demented or not.
Except for Trump.
I don't know what the odds are that you will get raped in prison...
but it's probably similar to the odds that you will get raped in the Ivy League
1 in 4
25% chance you will be sexually assaulted
scary place to be
(yes, I am mocking feminist social science)
I don't know what the odds are that you will get raped in prison...
but it's probably similar to the odds that you will get raped in the Ivy League
1 in 4
25% chance you will be sexually assaulted
scary place to be
apologies ahead of time for the double posting, I had too many windows open
So many guys are just nasty old shits underneath.
Don't limit this to the males. The place my mother was, had an old woman that cat called all the men visiting, and was explicit about what she wanted from them sexually, and asked in great detail about their equipment to make it happen. Made 50 shades of grey, a children's story by comparison.
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