This editorial from the WSJ says some good things about what to do to prevent another Virginia Tech massacre (h/t John Cole):
Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has been reported about his pre-massacre behavior–prolonged periods of asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre writing and speech–is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating, serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most common period when psychosis blossoms.
No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous “counseling”–an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to “treatment” for a patient with metastasized cancer.
But even that minimal care wasn’t given. The shooter didn’t want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it’s been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a “Behavioral Health Center” in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary “warehousing” were absent. The rest is terrible history.
That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.
If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario would’ve been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might’ve even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it’s possible confinement would’ve been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances.
This is good. Ever since the 70s, there’s been a clear relationship between the number of mentally ill people and the homeless, which in large part is due to closing down state hospitals. At my daughter’s preschool, we pulled up the carpets in the entry this weekend because it smelled like urine. The reason it smells is that there’s a transient who lives in the area who, among other issues, has bladder and bowel control issues, and will walk into the entryway during the day and soil himself. We’re getting the funding for a keypad for the exterior, but the reality is that this guy doesn’t belong wandering the streets near UW. I doubt he’s a threat, but I’d like to think that our society could at least make him comfortable and put him out of harm’s way.
The article then goes south in a hurry:
The best predictor of future violent behavior is past violent behavior, yet we regularly grant parole to murderers, serial rapists, chronically assaultive individuals and habitual pedophiles. Even when we do attempt to segregate low-impulse multiple offenders with effective tools such as with three-strikes laws, liberationist clamor never ceases.
At some point, if an inmate has done his or her time, then we let them go. And for parole, there are a number of criteria that must be met before someone is paroled. Does it always work? No. I read? heard? somewhere that a third of felons end up committing another crime. But then again, if that’s true, this means two-thirds don’t. If the author wants to argue that the sentences are too short, that’s one thing. But in any society governed by laws, once a punishment is meted out, society has to live with that punishment, even if after the fact people want more.
Talk to anyone who’s tried to commit a dangerously violent child or parent for even a few days: A stranger with a law degree will show up at the hearing and paint you as a fascist. So it’s far too much to expect anything resembling a decisive approach to those whose level of threat remains at the verbal level.
Given the excesses of the past–husbands committing troublesome wives, involuntary sterilization of those judged defective–extreme caution is warranted. But like drunk drivers, we sway from one side of the legal road to the other and find the sensible center lane elusive.
The problem here isn’t that it’s too hard to commit someone, or that there’s too much abuse when it’s too easy to commit someone. It’s that as a society, we don’t care that much about mental health. We are chronically building more jails instead of closing them, meaning we’re putting more people away. However, we aren’t doing nearly enough to help people that need it. And that’s what needs to be fixed.