Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and its Effect on the Criminal Justice System

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While the film box office continues to see millions of dollars in revenue from the film American Sniper, a jury found Eddie Ray Routh guilty of the first degree murders of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield.  During the trial documentation was provided that Routh was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”) and schizophrenia.  PTSD is a mental condition that is documented to occur to individuals who have experienced grave events including rape, death, or some sort of near death experienced. Because of the violent nature of war it is well documented that military service members may experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder upon returning to the United States, which affects their abilities not only to obtain jobs, but also to maintain relationships with family and friends.  The recent return of various combat troops is resulting in increasing numbers of veterans coming back as different people, often times violent.

The Federal Supervised Release System: Kicking an Offender Down When He Is Trying to Get Back Up

In 1984, the Sentencing Reform Act abolished the Federal Parole System and replaced it with the Federal Supervised Release System. Though the Federal Supervised Release System was supposed to serve the same rehabilitative function for offenders as the parole system, supervised release has led to many negative consequences for offenders. Instead of serving as a system promoting offender rehabilitation as Congress intended, the supervised release system has actually served as more of a leash, pulling offenders right back into prison.

           

Under the previous parole system, a defendant would be sentenced to a term of imprisonment and after serving the minimum sentence for his prison term, a parole board would determine whether the defendant was ready for release. When the inmate was released from jail on parole, a parole officer would then monitor him or her in the community. The effect of the parole system was that the individual was serving a portion of his or her jail time out in the community under supervision. It seemed reasonable that if one were let out of jail early, that there would be some type of supervision of the individual while out in the community completing his sentence.