[ExI] insanity plea

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 7:35 AM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
> These I
> favor, for there are a number of non-evil uses I can think of in providing
> complete public access to everyone’s arrest records and mental health
> records.  I will start by revealing my own: I have never been arrested or
> consulted a mental health professional.  There, see that didn’t hurt a bit.

The problem comes in context, which is often lost in complex but legit
situations.  For instance:

* If you have been arrested for a crime you did not commit, were
exonerated by the court, and even got false arrest charges to stick
against the police...you were still arrested.  Likewise if you were in
the wrong time at the wrong place, and arrested because you
looked like someone who had committed a crime, then released
once they saw they had the wrong person...you were arrested.

* The criminally insane who cause problems, were not adequately
consulted by mental health professionals.  It is quite easy to imagine
that some of them were not consulted at all, and if they had been,
they would have been caught before they became dangerous.  So
never having been consulted like this could be seen as a sign of
potential mental instability: no relevant professional has given you a
clean bill of health.

In the interests of efficiency, many who check these kinds of things
only present a yes/no option (or refuse to hear anything but "yes" or
"no") when asking this.  This is why it is illegal for an employer, in
most cases, to ask about specific generalizations that society has
deemed irrelevant to most jobs - notably sex and religion.
(Exceptions exist where it is relevant, e.g. religion for a priest job.)