Lindsay Clancy -Mother of 3 kills her kids during psychotic episode

[Joseph Maynor]

In common law in the US there is a principle that one must do or omit to do a voluntary (volitional is a better word) act.  A volitional act is the control of actions or omissions to act.  This means that there are certain exceptions to this rule.  Insanity is one of those.  Fault sometimes is not needed, e.g., in strict liability.  But for most civil and criminal law you need fault or some degree of fault (mens rea).  But if someone does not know what they are doing, these principles are maybe not satisfied.  The insanity defense in criminal law is generally based on this.  

Edited 10 hours ago by Joseph Maynor

[Emerald]

On 9/14/2026 at 5:25 AM, something_else said:

Yea, I agree 100%. There are basically three reasons to incarcerate someone; deterrence, rehabilitation and public protection.

I think prisons should be built primarily around the latter two. Deterrence doesn't really work that well because most criminals typically don't think they're going to get caught anyway.

It ends up being a kind of revenge where criminals suffer to make the victims feel better. Which, while I empathise with it, isn't really something you should build your society or prison system around.

The death sentence falls firmly in the deterrence category. It's just systematic revenge. You could make an argument it was about saving tax payer money for criminals who clearly have zero chance of rehabilitation, which I think is somewhat valid reasoning, but in the end most of them are still imprisoned for 15 years in top security prisons which ends up costing the tax payer a fuck ton of money anyway. So that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

I once heard that the death penalty actually costs more for taxpayers than lifelong incarceration.

Double-check that... as I only heard that once in passing. But I think the source was legitimate.

Those are exactly my thoughts. 

The issue is that people mix-up the concept of justice with the concept of revenge. And those are two different values.

And if the justice system serves the value of revenge, it mission drifts from the actual pursuit of justice. And that's how we end up with the very rudimentary and corrupt justice system we have.

Instead, if we kept our eye on the prize, which is 'public safety' and 'taking away the burdens of freedom away' from murderers and others who use their freedom to commit life-altering violence... then we're actually on-mission.

And I think the justice system that would result from that would be a lot more well-developed and nuanced.

Right now, our justice system basically functions like a trash can that we throw any criminal into... and we mix drug users in with child molesters and killers. And it makes zero sense.

So, I think there should be different types of sub-institutions for different types of crimes.

Like for drug users, they shouldn't have to be locked up at all... or to pay probation. Instead, they should just be required to seek help for the addiction... and have resources given to them.

For small-time drug-dealers, there should be short periods of time at a holding facility with non-violent offenders... where they have to learn about the harm that their drugs cause to people, to try to get them to reconsider what they're doing. And then, of course, mandatory confiscation of their drugs.

For violent non-lethal crimes and more established drug dealers, they should have their own holding facility that's heavily focused on rehabilitation. 

Then, there should be a totally different facility for intentional murderers (excluding manslaughter), rapists, child molesters, and other crimes where the default understanding is life-imprisonment... except in rare cases where there's a clear change in ethos for those who murdered because they were involved in gangs and other things like that.

And these facilities should all be built in a way that is less stimulating with calming colors and is going to be less likely to lead to agitation and conflict... as that's a better environment for rehabilitation and will reduce violence somewhat.

Then, I think most of the budget for the justice department should go to researching the true root causes of specific types of criminal behaviors... and (where possible) to proactively put resources to preventing the external circumstances that are more likely to produce that kind of behavior.

For example, if we know that poverty tends to lead to a greater likelihood of engaging in crimes like theft, drug dealing, and gang violence... then some of the justice resources should go to remedying the issue of poverty.

Right now, because we think about justice and revenge as the same thing... we're only thinking about prison, probation, and fines as the source of justice. But those are just punishments... and they don't actually prevent criminal from committing crimes. They just deter non-criminals.

So, our focus needs to be totally different to actually have an effective justice system that actually optimizes for a safer society.

And the death penalty doesn't belong in that paradigm... unless there is a region where there's literally no maximum security place to keep a dangerous criminal.

[Joseph Maynor]

Each state can craft its own statute as to the insanity defense through the legislature.