MENTAL HEALTH AND CRIME: ARE THE PENALTY OF COMMUNITY SERVICE A SUITABLE ALTERNATIVE TO PUNISHMENT?

Abstract

The article analyzes whether the penalty of community service is an adequate alternative to prevent people with mental illness from being imprisoned for committing minor or less serious crimes. The results of the study allow us to conclude that it is an alternative punishment objectively speaking suitable for the aforementioned offenders, especially if there is the possibility of serving it through participation in specific programs. Therefore, if we really want to reduce the overrepresentation of mental illness in prison, it is essential to address the problems that this punishment faces in its practical reality, especially in terms of its execution. In doing so, we would achieve several objectives that a fair and efficient model of criminal justice should aspire to; among others, 1) enabling the treatment of the mental illness of convicts in the community environment and in more effective and dignified conditions than those that, de facto, exist in prison; and 2) offer these people the opportunity of rehabilitation that, at least, slows down the negative evolution of the illness, whose worsening is usually accompanied by behavior with worse social and legal consequences that inevitably lead the convict to prison with all that this entails for the patient and for the institution itself that takes him in without being in a position to care for him.