Tag: criminal justice and mental health

Bill Sutherland took a plea deal for a crime he says he didn't commit. Almost two decades later, he was still being held in a psych unit.

In this piece for The Pew Charitable Trusts, Michael Ollove reports on Oregon's model of intense care and supervision for those found guilty except for insanity. "Oregon’s model...

In this piece for BBC, Melissa Hogenboom reports on the way that people who have been convicted of crimes and diagnosed with mental illness are...

From Scientific American: Criminal defense strategies are increasingly utilizing neurological evidence—psychological evaluations, behavioral tests and brain scans—to potentially mitigate punishment. Last week, a group of scientists met...

From The Sun: New York photographer Lili Holzer-Glier was recently allowed inside the Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago, where 35 percent of inmates...

Because of the enormous obstacles confronting individuals with behavioral health conditions who have been incarcerated, many peer-run organizations have risen to the challenge and have created programs to help these people rejoin the community.

Philip Chism, who at 14-years-old brutally assaulted and murdered his teacher at Danvers high school in Massachusetts, has attempted to mount an insanity defense by producing brain scans that his expert witnesses have connected to schizophrenia. The judge has dismissed this evidence, however. “The inference the jury was asked to draw was that the volumetric value of the brain [is] consistent with schizophrenia is that the defendant has schizophrenia,” he said. “That is simply an impermissible inference for the jury to draw.”