Welcome to Sin or Symptom

“The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.” Malcolm Gladwell wrote this line for a New Yorker piece called "Damaged."* It seems like a perfect summation of the dilemma that this blog will be exploring: the incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) amongst prisoners of the Texas state prison system. Last year, my blogging partner & I developed a policy brief on the subject for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. What we learned is pretty grim. We feel like people need to know about the current state of affairs regarding prisoners with mental disorders in Texas, especially given that our esteemed state legislature is currently in session.

We’ll be introducing some of the best research a little later. For now, suffice it to say that it’s well-established that folks who have either PTSD or TBI are more likely to act violently. The volume of research on prisoners specifically with PTSD or TBI is thin, but the conclusions are consistent: many, many prisoners have either PTSD or TBI – or both.

If we re-conceptualize many of the crimes committed in Texas as crimes of illness rather than crimes of evil -- and there is considerable evidence for this re-conceptualization – the first question that presents itself is, "should we do anything about it?" We can answer this question from both an ethical standpoint and a self-interested one.

Ethically, the answer is straightforward: if you have a prisoner with a health condition, you are ethically bound to care for them, since you have removed their ability to care for themselves. But given the current dire financial circumstances, is it in the state's best interest to treat these inmates' psychological and neurological disorders? Is the benefit worth the cost? While less obvious, we will argue that the answer is the same: yes, we should. More questions flow: How does the state identify those who are suffering from PTSD and/or TBI? How does it care for them? What about after their release? These are the questions we'll be exploring as the weeks go by, as well as looking at what the conditions currently are, and what policies the state legislature is considering.

*Years later, he wrote another piece on plagiarism, in which he discusses the plagiarism of "Damaged" generally and that sentence specifically. I like to think I always cite appropriately; needless to say, I am especially aware of the need in this case.