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49 Prison J. 3 (1969)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl49 and id is 1 raw text is: Guest Editorial The Mind of the Offender Our Primary Concern or An Unwanted Complication JOSEPH SATTEN, M.D. The editor and the authors of this issue of The Prison Journal are to be congratulated on focusing on the clinical issues involved in the handling of offenders rather than getting enmeshed in the moral issues of criminal responsibility. The articles, which describe the ways the legal, correctional, and mental health systems deal with mentally disturbed offenders, show how much can be done within the existing structure. The articles also show that in essence, we really have a non- system for dealing with the mentally disturbed offender. It is fragmented and there are overlapping areas of responsibility. When it works, it is because of discretionary, often informal, decisions which serve to take the offender out of the correctional system. At every phase of this process, the proper handling involves labeling the mentally ill offender as an exception, thereby giving him the right to treatment instead of punishment. Both in philosophy and practice, the legal and correctional systems still fail to recognize that all behavior is motivated and that, if we wish to change patterns of behavior, we must address ourselves to the thinking and feeling that underlies behavior. As psychiatrists and lawyers have begun to work more closely with each other, there has developed a greater understanding between these two disciplines. An occupational hazard in such work, however, is that one or both disciplines might lose sight of its primary point of view. For example, there is a tendency among psychiatrists working in this area to accept current legal practices as given and to modify their psychiatric conclusions to meet these realities rather than adhere to their opinions and challenge the legal system to handle the psychiatric realities. The authors have avoided that error, aside from Robitscher's intemperate and inaccurate criticism of all psychiatrists. Even when it works, the current system is based on an obsolete concept of mental illness, in which the mentally ill or mentally disturbed offender is seen as grossly disorganized or psychotic. Psychiatry, however, long since moved away from exclusive concern with the extremely ill. All psychiatrists work with neurotic individuals, and there has been increasing recognition that the character and behavior disorders, however labeled, require psychiatric care. Experience has shown that many individuals with such disorders can be treated in open hospital settings or as outpatients. Therefore, one must question the 3

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