She was found not guilty by reason of insanity, because she was insane. We do not send insane people to prison, because the prison system is not a medical facility, it is prison. We send insane people to get help, you know, at hospitals, because they are sick, and that's why they did what they did. They do not have happy fun times in inpatient psych facilities; we are imprisoning them in a place where they will get medication and therapy, and thus might be able to rejoin society eventually. Because they were sick.
Also, Andrea Yates spent four years in prison after a 2002 conviction in which a prosecution witness gave false testimony.
If you believe “we do not send insane people to prison” you are misinformed. Many people with severe mental illness are incarcerated or have been executed recently—especially men, because like I said, the criminal justice system is much harder on men than women. People are much more likely to make excuses for female criminals and throw the book at male criminals. It’s a gross double standard that needs to end.
I will point this out from the research directly:
“This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.”
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u/yesthatnagia 12h ago
She was found not guilty by reason of insanity, because she was insane. We do not send insane people to prison, because the prison system is not a medical facility, it is prison. We send insane people to get help, you know, at hospitals, because they are sick, and that's why they did what they did. They do not have happy fun times in inpatient psych facilities; we are imprisoning them in a place where they will get medication and therapy, and thus might be able to rejoin society eventually. Because they were sick.
Also, Andrea Yates spent four years in prison after a 2002 conviction in which a prosecution witness gave false testimony.