Confronting America's Violent Crime Problem Requires More Than Addressing the Mental Health Crisis

For a growing number of people, this behavior has grown into a specific mental illness – Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). When you add other conditions like schizophrenia, paranoia, malignant narcissism, and dissociative disorder, society ends up with tens of thousands of Decarlos Browns whose lack of impulse control, or imaginary voices, or simple blood lust cause them to end the lives of thousands of people every year worldwide.

Accurate statistics on homicides by mentally ill individuals are difficult to count due to differing definitions of what constitutes mental illness, but "According to a retrospective study of homicide in New Zealand from 1970 to 2000, 8.7% of 1498 homicides were committed by mentally abnormal offenders." It's certainly much higher in the U.S., where access to guns is easier than in almost any other country.  

The problem is made infinitely worse because of the effort by well-meaning, but catastrophically mistaken advocates for the mentally ill, who want to "eliminate the stigma" of mental illness and "mainstream" mentally ill people, helping them to live "normal lives."

This attitude has been legally translated into laws and rules that allow seriously mentally ill people who, in another time, would have been incarcerated, to roam the streets, confused, homeless, and subject to bouts of uncontrollable rage.

There are drugs like lithium and Thorazine that can treat serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia and some psychotic conditions. When taken as prescribed, dangerous individuals can live and work in society safely. 

But no one can force anyone to take these drugs. Almost all homicides by mentally ill people are by individuals who are "off their meds" and have relapsed or were never given any treatment for their condition. 

Is this a mental health problem or a law enforcement problem?

“There are evil people and we have to confront that,” Trump said at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

“We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

Whether Brown was "evil" or not is a discussion best left to experts of the mind. He indeed committed an evil act, however, and the president's statement that we have to get a handle on people like Brown roaming free gets to the nub of the problem.

One thing is certain: the simple-minded sophistry of Democrats on this issue can safely be ignored.

Wall Street Journal:

Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles, and North Carolina’s governor, Josh Stein, are Democrats. 

On Monday, nearly three weeks after the fatal stabbing and as it gained national attention, Lyles called for bipartisan legislation to stop repeat offenders who she said don’t face consequences for their actions.

“What we know is that this was a tragic failure by the courts and magistrates,” she said. “Our police officers arrest people only to have them quickly released.”

Gov. Stein said he has asked for more funding for law enforcement recruitment in his latest budget. “We need more cops on the beat to keep people safe,” he said.

More police officers? Yes. Legal reforms? Yes. Addressing the nation's growing mental health crisis? Of course.

This is a multifaceted problem that has to be addressed on several levels and not just by forcing mentally ill people back into institutions, where history has shown that too many people were incarcerated who didn't need to be, and asylums became dumping grounds for misfits, the retarded, and others suffering from mental disorders that threatened no one.

I'd suggest a national conversation about the mentally ill, but that's impossible in the age of social media. Congress is too paralyzed to do anything meaningful. So, more Iryna Zarutskas and Decarlos Browns will cross paths with tragic consequences. And we will once again decry a system that's worse than broken because the solutions are either too difficult to enact or we can't see any viable answers.