A Modest Proposal to Universalize the Insanity Defense and Replace Prisons and Punishment with Treatment and Education

Abstract

AbstractThe insanity defense is based on the assumptions that with the exception of the insane, everyone possesses free will and the ability to distinguish right from wrong. These assumptions are incompatible with the deterministic premises on which psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry and all other behavioral and natural sciences are based, and with the epistemological premises on which all of the modern sciences are based. Criminal law is based on answering moral questions as to how evil a given defendant's mind was and how much punishment he deserves. But even if we could gain the knowledge we would need in order to answer those philosophic questions (which we cannot, since philosophy cannot produce knowledge), the answers would give us no help in answering the only questions that are relevant to the goal of reducing the incidence of violence and increasing the safety and well‐being of the people: namely, the empirical, scientific questions, “what are the causes of violence, and how can we prevent it?” The modern prison system was a well‐meaning experiment in social engineering that has failed, because it is based on fallacious assumptions. For example, we know by now that punishing people in order to achieve a moral goal, justice, does not prevent violence, it stimulates it. That is among the reasons that prisons need to be abolished and replaced with a new approach based on proven methods of preventing violence, namely, safe, secure, home‐like residential colleges and therapeutic communities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.