More Than a Pound of Flesh: A Patient’s Perspective

Abstract

My entry into the Special Hospital system as a teenager came in the wake of increasingly disturbed and aggressive behaviour, culminating in a serious violent crime. My culpability was never in question, and realistically neither was the fact that I was severely emotionally disturbed and intent at times on wickedness for its own sake. I had no argument with my arrest or subsequent conviction although I was denied access to a solicitor when being arrested, and I began to realise very early on that those in authority who deal with offenders invariably do so in a high-handed manner, and rarely set a moral example from which the criminal may learn. I believe that if the police, prison and psychiatric authorities were more clearly moral and civilised in their handling of offenders, then the experience of the various forms of custody would reap far greater benefits both for society and for the offenders themselves.

It is not only honourable to doubt; it is mandatory to do that when there appears to be evidence in support of that doubt.

(Oppenheimer, 1955)