Amid horrendous misbehavior attributed to his emotional and behavioral disabilities, the future shooter was shuttled among various Broward County schools, including an episode being “mainstreamed” at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, scene of his later atrocity. Under the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been intensively litigated over the years, “school districts are required to provide kids with physical, emotional or intellectual disabilities a free education in the ‘least restrictive’ setting, and to accommodate the needs of such students.” [Carol Marbin Miller and Kyra Gurney, Miami Herald] He “was well-known to school and mental health authorities and was entrenched in the process for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement….Beginning in 2013, Broward stopped referring students to police for about a dozen infractions ranging from alcohol and drug use to bullying, harassment and assault,” under influence of national campaign against “school-to-prison pipeline.” [Tim Craig, Emma Brown, Sarah Larimer and Moriah Balingit, Washington Post]
8 Comments
I don’t think you can blame the school. It’s not like the problem here was that nobody reported the guy to law enforcement.
The logical and entirely predictable result of so many years of underfunding mental health while overfunding law enforcement is that those members of society with mental illness receive no care until they become criminals. Given the tone of this post, you would have criminalized this kid before he actually became a criminal, rather than actually help him.
Schools and the mentally impaired are definitely overlawyered. And under-treated.
Phil
” Given the tone of this post, you would have criminalized this kid before he actually became a criminal, rather than actually help him.”
I suspect the tone of this post is to point out that it is the overlawyering that is one (of many) causes of the under-treating those with mental illness.
Thanks to the lawyers, among others, getting a person committed against their will is extremely difficult. IMO, committing a person who needs it is, in fact, the compassionate thing to do – else they will end up in prison, or homeless on the street.
Walk past a homeless encampment on a frosty morning and tell me oh wise ones against commitment how compassionate it is that there are half starved sick people freezing in their own filth in a ragged tent, instead of in a warm bed, with a full belly, under the care of doctors and nurses.
“Thanks to the lawyers, among others, getting a person committed against their will is extremely difficult. IMO, committing a person who needs it is, in fact, the compassionate thing to do”
You forget that the actual history of the institutions to which the mentally ill were committed is one not of compassionate care by competent, caring doctors and nurses, but of horrific abuse.
Nope, I didn’t forget history. I’m all too aware of it (and other abuses of individuals by Government power) and to be blunt, quite sensitized to the past as a guide to the future. I’m not advocating for a loose, free for all system. But when parents, siblings, friends all repeatedly go to the authorities and say Billy or Susie has totally lost it, get them into some treatment, and all they get is a shrug and “nothing we can do until someone is actually hurt” that is a broken system.
In spite of those past abuses, which IMO can be rectified (cough, cough – eliminate public employee unions to start, to get accountability out of the public employees), commitment would still be better that the barbaric system today that forces the mentally ill on the street to suffer completely untreated and / or kill as the case may be. 17 innocents are dead from this one. How many of the untreated mentally ill die on the streets every day?
Even if imperfect, the harm to both the committed and innocent would be lessened by measured reforms to the laws governing involuntary commitment.
In re the Florida shooter: It would appear that everyone that knew this guy realized he wasn’t right in the head. Gentleman’s bet of a dollar that no one bothered to do anything since it was well known that it was futile to even try.
I agree with you.
” How many of the untreated mentally ill die on the streets every day?”
How many were tortured to death by quackery like shock therapy?
“Even if imperfect, the harm to both the committed and innocent would be lessened by measured reforms to the laws governing involuntary commitment.”
Not necessarily. Right now, there simply aren’t enough beds in existing institutions for what you are suggesting. However, it’s quite unlikely that the number of available institutions/beds could be increased significantly without significantly decreasing the quality of care provided and the ability of the government to monitor the quality of care. And that’s assuming current law is adequate to prevent a repeat of past abuses.
Phil wrote:
>The logical and entirely predictable result of so many years of underfunding mental >health while overfunding law enforcement is that those members of society with mental >illness receive no care until they become criminals.–
A key problem in many cases is that even the best treatments do not cure the sociopathic behavior. (Sometimes medications can keep sociopathy under control– not applicable in this case– but we lack procedures for immediate apprehension of those who “go off their meds.”)
Maybe we did not want to lock Nikolas Cruz up, but there should be a file for collecting all information (police calls, complaints to school administrators, etc) bearing on his fitness to buy and own a gun.