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Criminality and Mental Illness--Social Deviance or Sick Role | Stephanie D. Mullings
Criminality and Mental Illness--Social Deviance
or Sick Role by Stephanie D. Mullings
Is mental illness a disease or a social construct of society? Is there a real or spurious association between mental illness, deviance, and crime? Many states have used social control or biopower through imprisonment or medication to manage criminality and deviant behavior executed by the mentally ill. This article advances that many mental health individuals have been stereotyped as criminals because Delaware’s criminal justice system is limited in recognizing when someone needs treatment and not imprisonment.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness advises that the police have arrested one in four people with a serious mental illness in Delaware at least once in their lifetime and that 47,000 Delawareans did not receive the needed mental health care. Additionally, over 85,000 people lived in communities with inadequate access to mental health professionals (NAMI, 2021). The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that persons with disabilities related to mental illness in Delaware County have been unlawfully imprisoned (Melamed, 2021). This supports the Department of Justice investigations which indicated that institutionalized individuals with mental illness were unnecessarily segregated. The health system of Delaware failed to provide services to individuals with mental illness, as mandated by Title II of the Americans with Disability Act 1990. Consequently, persons who could be served in the community are unnecessarily kept in institutions such as Delaware Psychiatric Centre, reducing their rehabilitation time (Perez, 2010). An accepted perspective is that social control and power on the human body have changed with the reclassification of the term “insane” through the medical gaze. This presents a disadvantage as the mentally ill become compliant and docile, through obligatory power and regulation over their bodies.
Criminality is a social construct with macro-level consequences such as suicide and murder. It is influenced by societal exchanges of cultural values, language, gestures, and behaviors transferred through everyday interactions and within institutions where individual power over personal situations is reduced. This concept is considered a rational choice; however, it can be medicalized due to mental illness and deviant behavior.
There is no consensus on the causes and consequences of mental illness, even with the various professionally written definitions. It is believed that this social phenomenon results in gross impairment of perception. This is distressing and burdensome for families, communities, and the government. The biomedical determination of mental illness may be a challenge in that physiological signs or symptoms are not always apparent. Hence, the notion of social determinants of mental illness which challenge the medical model is explained by genetic factors.
The ideology of criminal behavior is a construct of society and can be disruptive to societal norms. It is sociologically engendered and fueled by culture, religion, and civic experiences and ideologies. For example, Emile Durkheim advances through the theory of structural functionalism that “deviance provides the key to understanding the disruption and re-calibration of society that occurs over time” (McIntosh, 2018). This perception when linked to mental illness is underpinned by the notion that a limited number of crimes is inevitable and even necessary. The citing of positive functions of crime such as social regulation, integration, and change is further used but makes problematic mental illness misdiagnosed as crime. Nonetheless, there is the need for balance as too much crime is threatening to society and should be socially controlled. Another notion being advanced is that the level of anomie or social instability can result in discrimination and even stigmatization. If internalized by discredited individuals, one consequence of stigma is criminal activity, an observable fact with mental illness leading to the dramaturgic perspective that “life is a theatre.” These notions, along with labelling and deviance, are associated with criminality attributed to non-conformance and aberrant human behavior (Hardie-Bick & Hadfield, 2011).
Inequality is one consequence predicated on the power one group has over the other whether by ethnicity, religion, culture, socioeconomics, language, gender, patriarchy, or education (Turan, et.al., 2019). The beliefs shared by conflict theories purported that society does not agree with social order; instead, beliefs are ordered by dominant groups. This dominance affects mental health and criminality in which ethnic minorities are at a higher risk for mental health problems and are more likely to be perceived as difficult or violent. Thereby, they experience prejudice by the legal framework with cultural stereotyping and racist attitudes. The debate is ongoing due to the incongruency in defining mental illness. These divergent views coexist regarding the system of socialization, norms, values produced, and understood appropriate behavior. Through the eye of social constructionism, mental illness is a function of the structural and behavioral constructs of the society with deviant members many times sharing similar characteristics such as socioeconomic status related to poverty, stress, family background, and cult membership. Being labeled sick, the deviant actions of the mentally ill are permissible during treatment through the medical power of the doctor in a doctor-patient relationship whose authoritative use of biomedicine becomes a guardian of public values and acceptable behavior. The doctor thus identifies the socially inept as mentally ill and legitimizes the means of socio-political control, which excludes other social determinants in medical care.
Medicalization and entering the sick role are the routes taken by offenders to evade the harshness meted out by law as they would be adjudged as being mentally ill and not criminals. For example, someone taking an antidepressant medication decides to abuse a child. Though social deviance is assumed, this individual may be acquitted or given a lesser charge because of mental illness and the admission of the illness factor. Though illness is not always temporary or voluntary, it can be used as a liberator legitimized by the doctor-patient consensual relationship. The universality of this state is believed to be socially constructed and continues to challenge biomedicine.
The tendency to generalize, stigmatize, or discriminate, should be decried, and instead, support should be offered to those who are suffering or are at risk of mental illness, thereby stemming criminality and deviant behaviors. It is, therefore, important for the building of capacity by Delaware State Department of Justice to distinguish between criminality due to mental illness and deviant behavior by otherwise non-mentally ill patients and to guard against mismanagement of persons with mental illness and to abide by the ADA requirements of 2009. The diagnostic journey continues.
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Works Cited
CHardie-Bick J., Hadfield P. (2011) Goffman, Existentialism and Criminology. In: Hardie-Bick J., Lippens R. (eds) Crime, Governance, and Existential Predicaments. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230343184_2. McIntosh, M., (17 March 2018), A Sociological Understanding of Deviance, Social Control, and Crime https://brewminate.com/a-sociological-understanding-of-deviance-social-control-and-crime/. Melamed, S. (2021). Lawyers say a Pennsylvania county traps people with mental illness in jail indefinitely. The Philadelphia Inquirer https://www.inquirer.com/news/delaware-county-probation-mental-illness-incarceration-20210912.html. Misselbrook D. (2013). Foucault. British Journal of General Practice 2013;63 (611):312 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp13X668249. National Alliance on Mental Illness (February 2021). Mental Health in Delaware. https://www.nami.org/NAMI/media/NAMI-Media/StateFactSheets/DelawareStateFactSheet.pdf. Perez, T., (2010). Investigation into Delaware Psychiatric Center. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Washington, D.C. 20530. The Philadelphia Inquirer https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/PB-DE-0003-0004.pdf. Turan, J. M., Elafros, M. A., Logie, C. H., Banik, S., Turan, B., Crockett, K. B., Pescosolido, B., & Murray, S. M. (2019). Challenges and opportunities in examining and addressing intersectional stigma and health. BMC medicine, 17(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-018-1246-9. World Health Organization (2004). Mental Health Altas 2005 [Online] Available from: https://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/atlas/profiles_countries_j_m.pdf.
