IMPORTANT FACTS

1. With each new failure to rehabilitate the criminally insane, psychiatry merely asks for more money because of the “seriousness of the situation.”

2. A research project by the California Department of Corrections into the effectiveness of one of its ongoing counseling programs found that at least half of the participants wound up back in jail within three years of parole.

3. A major part of the treatment for prison inmates is a regimen of powerful psychotropic drugs, despite numerous studies showing that aggression and violence are tied to their use.

4. In a 1979 murder trial, Estelle vs. Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court held, “Psychiatric testimony on the issue of future criminal behavior distorts the fact-finding process.”

CHAPTER THREE Rehabilitation Failures

In a 1995 Los Angeles Times article on juvenile crime, Vincent Schiraldi, founder and executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco think tank, wrote, “We should start holding the [justice] system accountable. If two out of three Toyotas broke down within a year of coming out of the factory, Toyota would be out of business. But if two out of three kids coming out of juvenile institutions re-offend, we build bigger juvenile institutions.”

And it is time to hold the psychiatrists and psychologists in our penal system responsible.

As the self-appointed “experts” on human behavior, rehabilitation is their job. They are paid for precisely this function. In and of themselves, prisons are simply warehouses where men and women can be kept so that they no longer harm society. The job of rehabilitation—making productive citizens out of inmates—is a job that has been taken on, at great expense to the taxpayer, by psychiatry. And, as usual, in the face of imposing failure, their response has been to ask for yet more money because of the “seriousness of the situation.”

However, a close inspection of the facts reveals their ineptitude:

A long-term research project by the California Department of Corrections into the effectiveness of
an ongoing counseling program in one of their medium-security prisons found that, within three years of parole, 78% of the men who had received psychological counseling experienced further minor and major problems with the law or had returned to prison.

A major part of the treatment for prison inmates is a regimen of powerful psychotropic drugs, used less for rehabilitation than for managing and disciplining them.

A 1975 Canadian study on the effects of psychiatric drugs on prisoners discovered that “violent, aggressive incidents occurred significantly more frequently in inmates who were on psychotropic [mind-altering, psychiatric] medication than when these inmates were not on psychotropic drugs.”

A 1990 study determined that 50% of all fights in a psychiatric ward could be tied to drug-induced akathisia (an inability to keep still), a side effect often causing assaultive, violent behavior.

Another study concluded that moderate-to-high doses of one major tranquilizer made half of the patients markedly more aggressive. Patients described being tormented by “violent urges to assault anyone near” and wanting to kill “the motherf____s.”

A 2000 Swedish study of 47 juvenile delinquents found that 40% were acute abusers of a tranquilizer—known as a “fear reducer” and “date rape” drug—that enabled them to commit extremely violent crimes.

At least 5% of the users of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants suffer “commonly recognized” side effects that include agitation, anxiety and nervousness, aggression, hallucinations and depersonalization.

Antipsychotic drugs, which are frequently given prisoners, may temporarily dim psychosis but, over the long run, make patients more biologically prone to it.

The authors of the book, The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment, report, “Medical methods may be practical expedients for controlling behavior in the institution, but this should not be confused with ‘curing’ disruptive behavior.”

Yet psychotropic drugs are now given to incarcerated youths and adults. Instead of rehabilitating the inmate so that he can become a productive member of society, these drugs make it even more difficult for him to escape the dwindling spiral of criminality and can induce violent behavior, for which psychiatrists should be held accountable.

As Professor Thomas Szasz says: “Psychiatrists—and only psychiatrists—have a professional duty to protect mental patients— and only mental patients—from harming themselves or others. Hence, if a person under psychiatric care kills himself or someone else, his psychiatrist may be held responsible civilly or criminally for the deceased person’s wrongful death.”

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