Recently Dr. Szasz was asked, "But don't you think that society has the right and the duty to care for those individuals adjudged to be 'dangerous to themselves and others'?" Szasz cogently replied:
I think the idea of "helping" people by imprisoning them and doing terrible things to them is a religious concept, as the idea of "saving" witches by torture and burning once was. As far as "dangerousness to self" is concerned, I believe, as did John Stuart Mill, that a man's body and soul are his own, not the state's. And furthermore, that each individual has the "right," if you will, to do with his body as he pleases — so long as he doesn't harm anyone else, or infringe on someone else's right.
As far as "dangerousness to others" goes, most psychiatrists working with hospitalized patients would admit this is pure fantasy . . . . There have in fact been statistical studies made which show that mental patients are much more law-abiding than the normal population.
And civil liberties lawyer Bruce Ennis adds that:
We know that 85 percent of all ex-convicts will commit more crimes in the future and that ghetto residents and teen-age males are far more likely to commit [p. 92] crime than the average member of the population. We also know, from recent studies, that mental patients are statistically less dangerous than the average guy. So if what we're really worried about is danger, why don't we, first, lock up all former convicts, and then lock up all ghetto residents, and then why don't we lock up all teen-age males? . . . The question Szasz has been asking is: If a person hasn't broken a law, what right has society to lock him up?8
The involuntarily committed may be divided into two classes: those who have committed no crime, and those who have. For the former, the libertarian calls unconditionally for their release. But what of the latter, what of criminals who, through insanity or other pleas, supposedly escape the "brutality" of prison punishment and instead receive medical care at the hands of the State? Here again, Dr. Szasz has pioneered in a vigorous and devastating critique of the despotism of liberal "humanitarianism." First, it is grotesque to claim that incarceration in a state mental hospital is somehow "more humane" than equivalent incarceration in prison. On the contrary, the despotism of the authorities is likely to be more severe, and the prisoner is likely to have far less recourse in defense of his rights, for as someone certified as "mentally ill" he is placed into the category of a "nonperson" whom no one feels obliged to take seriously any longer. As Dr. Szasz has jocularly said: "Being in a state mental hospital would drive anyone crazy!"
But furthermore, we must question the entire notion of taking anyone out from under the rule of objective law. To do so is far more likely to be damaging than helpful to the people thus singled out. Suppose, for example, that two men, A and B, commit an equivalent robbery, and that the usual punishment for this crime is five years in prison. Suppose that B "gets off" this punishment by being declared mentally ill, and is transferred to a state mental institution. The liberal focusses on the possibility, say, that B may be released in two years by the State psychiatrist through being adjudged "cured" or "rehabilitated." But what if the psychiatrist never considers him cured, or does so only after a very long time? Then B, for the simple crime of theft, may face the horror of lifelong incarceration in a mental institution. Hence, the "liberal" concept of indeterminate sentence — of sentencing someone not for his objective crime but on the State's judgment of his psyche or spirit of cooperation — constitutes tyranny and dehumanization in its worst form. It is a tyranny, furthermore, which encourages the prisoner into [p. 93] deceptive behavior to try to fool the State psychiatrist — whom he perceives quite correctly as his enemy — into thinking that he is "cured" so that he can get out of this incarceration. To call this process "therapy" or "rehabilitation" is surely cruel mockery of these terms. It is far more principled, as well as more truly humane, to treat every prisoner in accordance with objective criminal law.