Law Enforcement

One of Those Things We Forget About the 50’s & 60’s

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When I was young, mental hospitals sprinkled the countryside. My parents read Freud in hypochondriac mode and neuroses were part of growing up – indeed, nurtured in certain groups (say among drama majors & yes, creative writers). I don’t know what percentage of the population was housed on those wards, but considerably more than today.

Update: Jonathan Kellerman, a man who went through med school as these changes were taking place, describes the arguments for de-institutionalization by doctors & ideologues such as R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz. That in this case even those of us on this blog, non-experts, could see the problem indicates how extreme are the problems in contemporary treatment. As Kellerman notes

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.

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Searching for Options

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It is said that few things in this life are perfect. Remember that because we will be getting back to it later.

Back in the 1990’s, a series of high profile lawsuits prompted many police agencies to rethink their use of traditional tear gas as a way to subdue suspects. Some suspects had died after being sprayed with CS or CN tear gas agents. The reasons for the deaths could hardly be attributed solely to the use of chemical agents, but that had little bearing when a government agency is looking to reduce their chances of getting sued. Switching to pepper spray from the tried-and-true tear gas agents seemed to be a way to head off legal action while still providing a way to control violent suspects.

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Prosecute the flying imams?

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Here’s one proposal (in response to this reasonable question). Newt Gingrich expressed a similar idea.

Nowadays anybody who makes bomb jokes in an airport security line or on a plane can expect to be arrested. So why doesn’t a group exercise in terrorism street-theater, which seems to be much more threatening and disruptive than are mere jokes, get the same response? Certainly the perpetrators of this incident have received a lot of public scrutiny and criticism, which they deserve, but they also have received a great deal of valuable publicity at little cost to themselves.

The implicit incentive structure here is not a good one. Politically protected groups should not be granted legal safe harbor to engage in abusive stunts while poor schmucks who say something stupid in an airport security line get the book thrown at them. If we are serious about security we should prosecute the imams — as punishment for disrupting the lives of many people who reasonably perceived them as threatening, as a deterrent against future such behavior and to deter real attacks. On the other hand, if we think it’s more important to be politically correct and not offend anyone, let’s eliminate the whole air-security charade.

I think we should be serious about security and prosecute the imams. Their behavior, unlike that of most jokesters, was clearly intended to provoke and did so convincingly. Unfortunately the official response to the incident makes clear that political correctness is our institutional priority.