Intellectual Disabilities and the Justice System
Challenges Faced by Individuals with Mental Retardation in Court
Dec 2, 2008
The vast majority of people with mental retardation never break the law. Nevertheless, mentally retarded people may be unreasonably represented in prisons. The disproportionate number of persons with mental retardation in the incarcerated population most likely reflects the fact that people with this impairment who break the law are more likely to be caught, more likely to confess and be convicted, and less likely to be paroled.
People with mental retardation often try to compensate for their mental and developmental deficits by saying and doing whatever they think will please authority figures -- and they are often highly accustomed to the subtle and even not-so-subtle clues their interlocutors may give about what constitutes "the right answer" to a given question. In turn, mentally retarded people end up making false confessions.
Strong Desire for Approval
The desire for approval and acceptance and the need for protection can lead a person with mental retardation to do whatever others tell him. They very often fall prey when people with greater intelligence decide to take advantage of them, and they become the unwitting tools of others. Many of the cases in which people with mental retardation have committed murder involved other participants -- who did not have mental retardation -- and/or occurred in the context of crimes, often robberies, that were planned or instigated by other people.
People with mental retardation may also engage in criminal behavior because of their characteristically poor impulse control, difficulty with long-term thinking, and difficulty handling stressful and emotionally fraught situations. They may not be able to predict the consequences of their acts or resist a strong emotional response. The homicides committed by people with mental retardation acting alone are almost without exception unplanned, spur of the moment acts of violence in the context of panic, fear, or anger, often committed when another crime, such as a robbery, went wrong.
Multiple Vulnerabilities
A history of severe childhood abuse is particularly common among defendants with mental retardation convicted of capital murder. The long-term negative effects of childhood abuse may be even greater for people whose cognitive abilities are impaired. Mentally retarded persons are much more vulnerable to manipulation during arrest, interrogation, and confession.
Many capital defendants with mental retardation also suffer from mental illness. Although the two conditions are often confused, they are different disorders. The percentage of mentally retarded people who are also mentally ill is not known with any certainty; estimates vary from 10 percent to 40 percent.Persons who suffer from both mental illness and mental retardation are particularly disadvantaged in dealing with the criminal justice system because each condition can compound the effects of the other.
It is not surprising that people with intellectual disabilities are more likely to be arrested, convicted, sentenced to prison and victimized in prison. Once in the criminal justice system, these individuals are less likely to receive probation or parole and tend to serve longer sentences due to an inability to understand or adapt to prison rules.
Like all human beings, people with mental retardation deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and deserve the chance to live lives that are as normal as possible -- but they also require special acknowledgment of their vulnerabilities and their mental incapacities. While most defendants with mental retardation who have committed a crime know they have done something wrong, they often cannot explain why the act was wrong.
