Shrink Rap by Dinah Miller

Author:Dinah Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 142140012X
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Chapter 8

Eddie: The Prison Patient

EDDIE HAD A traumatic and challenging childhood. His early years were marked by instability, bad influences, and poor choices. Before he turned 12, Eddie came into contact with the court system through a juvenile burglary. As a result of this delinquency hearing, he was required to attend outpatient counseling and to pay restitution for the damage he had caused to the business he burglarized.

We used Eddie’s case to describe some of the legal issues that involve the participation of forensic psychiatrists. Juveniles are usually involved in issues that are civil matters, such as decisions about child custody and visitation or child neglect proceedings. Juvenile delinquency hearings are also technically civil in nature because the purpose of the process is to provide treatment and rehabilitation to juvenile offenders rather than punishment. However, forensic psychiatrists also work with people who become involved in criminal legal issues. Criminal law pertains only to people who are legally adults. Although it would be nice to give Eddie’s story a happy ending, we’re going to walk him through more trouble to illustrate how forensic psychiatrists become involved in the criminal arena.

Unfortunately, Eddie’s father, Lou, was no believer in mental health services. He didn’t like the idea of having his child “drugged up” on psychiatric medications, and because he was only occasionally employed, he couldn’t afford to keep Eddie in counseling. By the time Eddie was 18, he was over six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds. Eddie and Lou fought frequently, both verbally and physically. One night Eddie took off for good when Lou was sleeping. On his way out the door, he took Lou’s cocaine and heroin, then broke into an abandoned building to share the drugs with his friend Bernie. Police cruising the area saw the building’s front door broken off its hinges and found Bernie and Eddie nodding off in an upstairs bedroom. They were both charged with breaking and entering and drug possession, misdemeanor crimes.

When Eddie went to court, he admitted he had a drug problem. “I need help,” he said to the judge. “I can do probation, and I’ll even go back to the clinic I was in before. I quit taking my medication and got depressed. At the clinic they told me I was self-medicating.” Eddie’s public defender knew about his drug problem and his psychiatric history. He knew that the best outcome for his client would be to get Eddie involved in a specialty court designed for offenders like him, and he told Eddie his plan to ask the judge to transfer the case to mental health court.

Specialty courts were created because judges recognized that certain types of offenders had conditions that required treatment, and that they were likely to reoffend without close supervision. These courts were designed using a collaborative, rather than an adversarial, model. In an adversarial model, the state’s attorney’s primary duty is to protect public safety and to seek justice. In a collaborative model, both the state and the defense attorneys work for the goal of offender rehabilitation.

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