Lock Up!

Today I've been watching Lock Up on MSNBC. Its a really interesting show on prisons, where they interview prisoners, psychologists, and the security. 16% of people in prison in the US have a mental disability. At first I thought that more would, seeing as how some of them commit horrible crimes. Earlier this year I read Crime and Punishment ( a 600 page book that I thought was going to kill me, but it turned out be pretty interesting), and my Lit class discussed the subject of insanity. Many people who have committed serious crimes claim temporary insanity, yet it cant be proven because it was temporary, and therefore only those who are insane (not temporarily) can get out of the punishment for the crime.  But how could a person of sound mind commit a serious crime like murder? We decided that there is a line between sanity and insanity and in order to murder someone you must be temporarily insane or else you would not be able to take another's life willingly. People say when they really hate a person that they would kill them, but who actually would? If a person is of sound mind, their conscience wouldn't let them do that- as a class we discussed this and decided that one must step over the boundary into insanity even for a breif moment. Now I know that all people in prison havent committed murders, but there are other serious crimes that would be very difficult to commit being of sound mind- and of course drugs play into that too. There are a lot of people in jail in the US and 16% is a lot of people. Its sad but true. The show is really good and helps you understand the people in prison a lot better, it shows you that some arent as bad as we make them out to be. They did commit a crime but most of them regret it and a lot of them couldnt really help it because of their permanent state of mind.