Richard E. Vatz:
I just want to reiterate one point and perhaps solicit some information. Perhaps it’s due to my lack of knowledge of criminal justice systems outside of the United States but repeatedly in the U. S: the problem is one of not inculpation but exculpation and we’ve heard very little about that today and I guess what I wanted to know was: is it the case that there is no problem with psychiatric exculpation outside of the U.S. Is this a rare problem? Does this count for …almost nothing regarding that today? 

Alon Harel:
My question is related. I wonder who usually initiates the process of the psychiatrist? Is it very often the defendant, that I think you suggested, or is it the judge himself or herself or is it somebody else? And if it is the defendant, this raises the issue of exculpation more prominently I think.

Thomas Saschenbrecker:
No, normally it is not the defendant.

Thomas Szasz:
Can I answer the question? If you listen carefully to these stories, they are virtually all exculpations, in that, instead of trying and sentencing the defendant to a definite term, they are treated benevolently and put in a mental hospital. … In fact, we have hardly heard any cases of civil commitment where a wife commits a husband because he is going to commit suicide. We have heard only ….. 

Richard E. Vatz:
Well the only explanation that I … is that the cases that I know of anecdotally over and over and over again are cases in the U.S. are, when you ask the question: Que bono?, the answer is: The defendant benefits by psychiatric intercession and … 

Thomas Szasz:
Well, the guy who shot Reagan, Hinkley, - my favorite case – is that inculpation or exculpation? 

Richard E. Vatz:
Well, Hinkley was such an aberrant example, but …

Thomas Szasz:
No, it’s not!

Richard E. Vatz:
Well I’m saying these are certainly examples – I am not saying that there are no examples of inculpation, I am just saying that you have case after case in the U.S. where there is psychiatric intercession and you find that it is to the defendant’s damage.

Kate Millett:
Ultimately not but he may be conned into thinking so.

Richard E. Vatz:
Well I mean, I am not speaking …

Thomas Szasz:
And there are such cases too. I’ll send you some copies.

Richard E. Vatz:
Yes I understand. Let me just clarify because I don’t want to be misunderstood. I understand the role of psychiatry in inculpation and I understand literally that you’re saying it’s exculpation. 
Thomas Szasz:
There is a very famous case in Switzerland where a man killed both parents and was let out after 3 or 4 years and inherited millions of dollars. 

Richard E. Vatz:
Right! Just let me make the point: there are officially one quarter of one percent of all criminal justice system cases in the U.S. are found “not guilty by reason of insanity” with usually the defendant serving a minimal amount of time in a mental institution. But behind that number is the fact that that translates into a lot more absolute cases. And the other point that I make is that there is a great deal of psychiatric intervention with diversionary programs where people who drink, for example, are much better off when they commit a crime than people who don’t drink because they get put in diversionary programs where they maybe go to a program for their alleged alcoholism and they won’t serve any time because …

Thomas Szasz:
That’s right, we have not heard the ….. case.

Richard E. Vatz:
That’s right.

George Alexander:
But Dr. Vatz, I believe you may be mistaken in the part of what you related. The statistic is right: one quarter of one percent is successful. The comment that they usually serve short sentences is, I believe, incorrect. They usually serve very long sentences and the more serious the alleged crime, – we don’t know whether it was committed – the longer the sentence. Hinkley is aberrant for a number of reasons, not in the length of his sentence. They thought he did something which was serious and he is going to have a heck of a time getting out. 

Richard E. Vatz:
George, I would be one of the last people to empirically challenge you but I don’t think you’re correct about Hinkley being anything but an aberrant case in terms of the amount of time that he has been at … Elisabeth Hospital in Washington. 

Alon Harel:
Can you tell us what Hinkley is?

Richard E. Vatz:
Yes, John Hinkley is the fellow who tried to kill President Reagan and did shoot as well James Brady and the secret service agent – his name escapes me. Hinkley emphatically would have been released were it not for the efforts of many people who found out that the psychiatrists were about to recommend his release. Actually they did recommend his release but he was not because of the uproar. But my only point is that I am not trying to contradict the cases of the violence against people psychiatrically, I am merely saying that a very, very important component of criticism of psychiatry is the exculpatory component of psychiatry.

Kate Millett:
Yes, but it really doesn’t seem to work any more. What it’s done, it seems to me in what you’ve described – I did a book on torture and studied torture for seven years in different political regimes and in this case it was Uruguay where they had hired psychologists from the United States to set up a panoptican and to drive people crazy who were their prisoners. That was there stated purpose – not just to break them but to make them insane and they use all sorts of clever things: it would be a crime to draw a picture, the movies you would see would be deliberately slow and so on… and on and on. But the regimes that you described in the closed hospital seem to me like an improvement over anything they ever did in Uruguay. And this wasn’t just for a little while in a dictatorship. This is in a democracy. So I think psychiatry has really… If you ever tried to cheat them with an insanity and got by for a minute, they’ve got brand new ways to take care of people. And also because it is all about deals now and copping a plea. You think you’re going to do a bit better by saying you were drunk – oh, my word! Now you’re not being punished for a crime at all, you’re in a sort of existential condition of insanity or alcoholism or something, from which you virtually can never escape. From what you say, nobody ever gets out, it’s a perfect system and they have absolute power. This is really… This is hell! And it’s very clearly done. 

Dr. Vatz:
Sentence after sentence is mitigated.

?:
May I just make a point here? Please don’t misunderstand us. It is not about nobody getting out of it. Sometimes somebody gets out of it. The big problem is that nobody has got a perspective – he cannot tell whether he will get out ever and when he will get out. He cannot know in which phases he can plan his future life. That is the atrocity about the whole system. However, it may well happen that somebody gets out of it.

Dr. Vatz:
I just want to say that sentence after sentence is mitigated in the United States, certainly in the state in which I live, is mitigated by people who promised to get counseling, promised to go to diversionary programs. It is just repeated, it is an outrage and I just urge you that… It’s ok to have hostility toward psychiatry but you’ve got to have enough dispassion to be able to step back and look at the various components if it. It is not so simple. 

George Alexander:
I don’t want to do a duel of statistics with you. I will challenge you to one sometime later. I want to point out that the supreme court has had found a need to point out that while the end of the criminal sentence serves the maximum time that a person can be held in a mental institution if convicted. They’ve made the point that you can keep a person well beyond the final term of a criminal sentence, so long as he is acquitted by reason of insanity. The only point I’m making is: that seems to me not to be a very necessary decision in a world in which there is a lot of mitigation … sentence going on. 

?:
They tell me you could do that by criminal law too. 

W-D. Narr:
If they serve their time for the crime, he can continue his imprisonment even beyond the normal rule. You can keep them beyond 20 years. 

?:
Forever!!

W-D. Narr:
Even somebody who is imprisoned life-long, which is normally 20 years.

Kept, when a kind of psychiatric … can be kept for a long time because psychologists, pathology plays an important role in the middle of any kind of normal criminal law procedure. 

T. Szasz:
I think that the point that Miss Peter made is extremely important, because if you read late 19th century, early 20th century classical literature, …… ….., or even back to much earlier writers, they emphasize that the most important thing about anglo-saxon criminal law is that it is a deal. You serve your time. The very language expresses it. You steal something, you are sentenced to 5 years. If you behave, you can get out in maybe in 3 or 4 but they cannot keep you one more day, unless psychiatry comes in. 

W-D. Narr:
Classical enlightenment of course. You are punished for your deed, not for anything else.

T. Szasz:
For the act, not for your self, not for your status. And actually there is a word in English law – excuse me for speaking law – “capriciousness”. It’s been often said that the essence of despotism is not tyranny but capriciousness. 

Dr. Vatz:
And the only thing I would add to that – as opposed to contradict – is that the points that are made with respect to the power of psychiatry to extend sentences are not incompatible with the point that psychiatry also serves an exculpatory function. 

George Alexander:
Miss Peter, did you have something to add to that?

Lawyer Christa Peter:
Yes, just on the question of the length of residence. I just wanted to offer you a few facts: from Neustadt, the Baltic Center for Mental Health, I would say that murder usually is served by a sentence of 15 years but let me say that Lars Christiansen who set fire to the house in …. where the Turkish family were living. Lars Christiansen was given a youth sentence of 10 years for murder and then after 7 ½ years he was offered probation, suspended sentence on probation, and he was brought to the baltic unit, to the Norman neurological center as a condition and within 6 months they had cured him. And then after 8 years he was free and in the closed regime, my patient, Mr. Sabasch, has been for 30 years, Mr. Buhl has been there 20 years, Ralf has been there 20 years, ……….. has been there for 26 years, Jochen has been there for 18 years, Ram has been there for 16, Dieter for 20, Michael for 22, Jörn for 14, Wolfgang for 22 years, Adam for 16 years in this closed regime for deeds… I know for Mr. Sabasch, normally he would have got 18 months for the crime. And they came there, they were still half children: 15, 16, 17 years old when they arrived. And now 24… There is one guy, he has been there for 7 years, Alexander Christian is now 32. He was 16, 16 years ago when he arrived. “J” - I don’t know what it stands for – he arrived when he was 16 in the closed regime and he has been there for 9 years. That’s the facts! 

Those are the prospects for the people in this kind of regime.