Incarcerating innocents
“MPs are to debate controversial moves to allow mentally ill people in England and Wales to be detained even if they have not committed crimes.”
This proposal really worries me. Yes, there is a need to protect the public from the possibility that mentally ill people may commit crimes. However, surely if a person is so dangerous that they may harm others then they are also in danger of harming themselves? It may be a fine distinction, but while I agree that it is acceptable to incarcerate people to protect them from themselves, it would be a slippery slope and a human rights disaster if society was to start locking people up for “pre-crime”. From BBC News, here.
Posted
Monday, June 18th, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
Filed in human rights, politics
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June 19th, 2007 at 1:03 am
yikes..
“we think you’re going to do something wrong..”
scary stuff.
si.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Exactly. Besides, aside from the civil liberties/human rights issues it seems a total cop-out to me to say “OK, we can’t help/treat/observe our mentally ill, so we’ll lock them up just in case they do something wrong.” Talk about discrimination.
The scary thing is, if you start going down that route I’m sure you could then argue that entire socio-economic groups should be locked up because they’re at a “higher risk” (or, just happen to be discriminated against by the system?) of committing crimes…
It worries me how much my country has eroded human rights in just the last decade…