People with learning disabilities who offend?

Question

Should people with learning disabilities that offend be processed by the Criminal Justice System and held responsible for their actions, or can they not be held accountable for their actions and any aberrant behaviour should be dealt with by health care professionals and not the Criminal Justice System?
Any answers would be greatly appreciated as this is forming part of a debate on my university course.

Answer 1

I have dyslexia, which is considered a learning disability. I also have a full scale IQ of 124, and a verbal IQ of 131. I most certainly function as an adult, and see no reason why my relatively poor reading skills would mean I shouldn't be held accountable for my actions. Dyselxia effects my ability to read quickly, memorize trivial information, and follow driving directions, but it has no effect on my ability to tell right from wrong. I think that the same would apply to disabilities like ADHD, dysgraphia, and similarly specific issues that impact specific skills or abilities that are unrelated to comprehension or judgement.

On the other hand, people who are mentally retarded (and yes that, not "learning disability" is the appropriate clinical term) should not automatically be held criminally responsible for their actions, or treated like a "normal" adult offender. Our criminal justice system treats children differently than adults for a reason. Kids within a certain age range are tried in a separate juvenile justice system that emphasizes rehabilition rather than punishment on the assumption that they didn't fully understand what they were doing, and may still be able to learn not to do it. Kids under a certain age cannot be tried at all, even in juvenile court, because it's assumed that they did not know what they were doing and didn't do it on purpose.

If a six year old child takes his fathers gun to school and shoots and kills another student, he won't be tried with murder, because most six year olds aren't mature enough to understand what death means. Kids that age will expect a dead relative to come home, even after it's explained to them that they're not going to. An adult with the mental ability of a six year old is going to have an equivalent level of understand of death, and consequently will be similarly unable to understand what happens if they kill someone. Shouldn't they be given similar treatment to the child who didn't know it was wrong? Our special treatment of children in the criminal justice system is based on intellectual development, not physical appearance, and an adult with the intellectual abilities of a child should not be presumed responsible for his actions in the same way that an adult of normal intelligence would be.

Answer 2

Everybody has psychological problems. Every single human being does. It's probably one of our most universal traits. What those problems are and the severity are what differs between each of us.

The tenant of ignorance is no excuse says no in a big way.

Second, why learning disabilities? What about people with rage disorders? People who have severe mental illness such as being flat out psychotic? Those with weak will power is another example. If they have weak willpower and the temptatation mounts, after a while they'll succumb. Simple fact is that every "offender" has something wrong with them just as much as every non-offender does.

I personally think that not executing the mentally retarded for capital crimes is the exact opposite of what we need to do. Many disabilities can be compensated for and thus the potential for rehabilitation. If the retardation is severe enough rehabilitation is just not possible. If they lack the intellect to understand right and wrong they lack the ability to ever grasp that. The death penalty has only one real purpose, that is to make sure those executed never walk the streets again. No parole, no escape, no law changes, no pardon. Not if they are dead.

When you say learning disabilities if you mean the PC term which equates to retarded then yes they should be handled by the justice system. Learning disabilites to me means things like dyslexia, ADHD, etc. Problems with learning not lack of intellectual capacity.

What studies have found was that a very disproportionate number of offenders suffered such learning disabilities. This also resulted in a much lower level of education among the incarcerated than the general population. People with learning disabilities (more traditional deffinition which excludes mentally retarded) as a hole tend to have a significantly lower level of education than the general population.

The second aspect is culture. Poverty is the #1 cause of crime and the poor are the people most likely to commit a crime. Lack of education is a double stigma on the poor, whether it be influenenced by learning disabilities or by social pressures or just plain bad luck.

So in answer your waiting too long to address the issue. Those at risk should be helped BEFORE they become offenders. This extends beyond traditional learning disabilities. Prisons tend to be repositories of the high and low ends of the bell curves. Both find traditional social structures lacking at best and often downright hostile. A smart kid born in a poor neighborhood is going to be far more likely to wind up in the correctional system than kids with learning disabilites born into middle class or wealthy areas.

There are three areas that fail an offender. The first is self responsibility. Except those without the ability to discern right or wrong the "offender" often makes a choice. Often it is the lessor of evils. Sometimes not. The second is the system. If an individual is incapable of knowing right and wrong they do not belong in an unsupervised environment. If they are capable and still do not know then the parents have first failed them, the society around them has failed them as well and finally the institutions have failed. Last if there were reasonable alternates to the action that made them an offender. Many "offenders" had no reasonable choice but to do what they did. This is especially true for self defense cases and crimes of passion.

In summary, if you take the tact that learning disabilities constitute special treatment then you discrimanate against the many other factors that make an offender an offender. If you excuse the mentally retarded, besides releasing intelligent offenders who fake retardation to avoid consequences you expend effort after the fact where those same resources would be better served in prevention.

A second aspect is that it causes funding to be diverted to those least likely to be rehabilitated from those most likely to be rehabilitated.

In almost all cases social pressures are the best guards against crime for all groups. Poverty and the effects of it being the biggest aspect. Fighting poverty will do more to fight crime than any other three efforts combined. A fair justice system will again do more to prevent crime than all the efforts in the world to deal with offenders after they've committed a crime. The bulk of crime committed which is not economically motivated or crimes of passion are crimes by people expressing outrage at one aspect or another of society. Normally by people who feel they've suffered gross injustice at the hands of the system. This resentment distorts perception of right and wrong and pushes them outside of normal society. The war on drugs has been probably the greatest tool of injustice out there right now, but is just one of many.

Answer 3

One could argue that no the legal system is not the way to deal with this type of 'criminal' and that the care in the community (so called) system should be held accountable a lot of these people are left to fend for themselves run their own lives when a lot are clearly not capable of doing so.

Answer 4

This is a hard one. Some people who have learning difficulties are essentially children is adult bodies with no concept of right and wrong. In this instance I think each case should be taken into consideration without generalising. There are people out there who still plead insanity after commiting crimes as if it somehow justifies what they've done. You have to be careful you make sure you can differentiate between these people and those who genuinly have problems before you hand out any sort of punishment.

Answer 5

i agree w/the ppl in this group that said that u need a slimmer definition of what defines a learning disability. Should an adult w/the mental comapcity of a 5 yr old be tried as an adult for a crime? of course not. they don't know right from wrong. but should someone like me, of average intelligence, a 27 yr old woman, who just happens to be developmentally delayed in mathmatics and analytical comphresion be tried as an adult if i go out and commit a crime? absolutely. bc i know right from wrong, and can understand the consequences of my actions. it all depends on the type of disability that ur talking about ,and the severity of it in that person.

Answer 6

Interesting question but what constitutes learning disabilities? ADHD, Downs Syndrome, Autism.....Schizophrenic, Psychopath? When does a learning disablilty end and a mental illness begin? The criminally insane are not put into mainstream prisons because they can not be cured/treated/rehabilitated. I will look for the answers you get, very interesting.

Answer 7

I am afraid that too many people claim to have learning difficulties and they are normally treated leniently in Britain at least although in America it does not seem to matter even mental defectives who do not know what they are doing are executed by mental defectives who think they do such as Bush. The problem is any child who does not do what he or she is told is now considered to have some some sort of learning difficulty and it drugged up to the eyeballs and so in fact becomes an adult with learning difficulties caused by the drugs and so commits offences under the influence of drugs and ends up in court in this case it is the doctors and parents who should be jailed not the offender.

Answer 8

Sorry I think you need to refine your question, I have a learning disability (dyslexia) but I know the difference between right and wrong, and if I committed a crime (and got caught) I would expect to face the full majesty of the law and rightly so.
The 11 commandment thou shall not get caught.

Answer 9

It should be dealt with by health care professionals based on how extreme the crime is and how bad the disability is...

Answer 10

Adults with learning disabilities can still be sued and police do investigate complaints, u have to fill in forms etc.