Insanity Defense Research Paper

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Not guilty by reason of insanity has perplexed the most qualified legal and psychiatric professionals for centuries. The insanity defense is rooted in the belief that when a person is so mentally disturbed that their irrationality or compulsion is impossible to control, it would be unfair to punish them in such an extreme condition (4). This beginning the argument of is the mental health of an individual more important than them paying for their crimes.
The insanity defense has become a media sensation that it is a loophole for the criminal society, to get out of their wrongdoings. However, this is false, although insanity cases attract a lot a media attention they are not raised very often. Virtually all studies concluded that the insanity cases is only raised less than 1 percent, and is only successful in only a fraction of those (5). Furthermore, defendants found guilty by reason of …show more content…
(6)” Which brings up a good point, for it is extremely hard to decide if a person was legally insane when the crime was committed. In addition, when someone as deranged as Jeffrey Dahmer is rejected on the insanity plea, then almost no other criminals would qualify for the defense at all (8). Others attack the insanity plea for confusing psychiatric and legal concepts, for the word insane is a legal term, not a medical. For it is too simplistic to describe a severely mentally ill person as merely insane (4) In a like matter, there is something called the catch twenty-two dilemma, which is that if a defendant is sane enough to plead insanity, then is/were they really insane, since typically insane people don’t know they are insane, but note emphasise on typically cause since someone actually knows there’s something wrong with them
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