Oregon's innovative system for supervising offenders found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Abstract

#{149}In the January Law & Psychiatry column, Dr. Paul Appelbaum (1) pointed out that many states have revised their procedures for dealing with post-insanitydefense cases so that they are similar to the procedures governing civil commitment. He noted that this trend has been under increasing attack by public officials and the general public as unfair and unsafe. In 1977 Oregon developed a system that was felt to respect the moral and constitutional issues inherent in the insanity defense but yet be realistic about criminal behavior and public safety. After rejecting proposals to abolish or modify the insanity defense itself, the legislature concentrated on creating innovative procedures to supervise those found not guilty by reason of insanity. The legislature addressed two major problems in the old system. The first was the problem of divided authority. Each judge maintained jurisdiction over defendants acquitted on the insanity defense in their courts, but in practice many judges deferred automatically to the opinions of state hospital staff about when a person was suitable for release from the hospital. Those opinions naturally tended to be grounded in medical judgments about the need for further hospitalization rather than in considerations of public safety. The second problem area was that there was virtually no community follow-up once a person was released from the hospital. Neither the hospital nor the judges had staff to monitor an individual’s progress. There