A troubling issue

Are states using mental institutions to effectively imprison certain offenders for life, even though they have served their full sentences? It seems likely: NY Times - Questions Rise Over Imprisoning Sex Offenders Past Their Terms.

Now, a sex offender does not get any special sympathy from me. But our culture seems to have such a horror of this particular kind of crime that we throw reason out the door. Many people would say, "Good! Let them rot away in a mental institution. That's good justice!"

But good justice is imprisoning people for the crimes they have committed, and freeing them when they've served the time specified in the statutes for their offense. Good justice is not using the health care system as a de facto prison system for people who serve as political free passes to "tough on crime" lawmakers.

Read the article, and you'll see all kinds of examples of bad psychiatry and bad law being applied to keep people locked up indefinitely. In the five years since New Jersey enacted this system, over 300 men have been locked away in prison-like mental institutions... only 11 have "recovered" and been released. All of these men have done their full prison sentences, but for most of them it appears they will be locked away for life, simply because their past actions inspire an irrational loathing and disgust among the voting public.

That's not good justice. It's not even American. But it is popular, and that's why many such outrages continue in America, to our great shame.