Professional Accountability in the Treatment and Release of Dangerous Persons

Abstract

Before I began writing this chapter, I was physically threatened by a group of teen-agers while walking to my car in an economically depressed area of an East Coast city. A few days later, I witnessed an attack upon a person in a different city. I did what I could to help him, but it was clearly not enough. I held his hand as he died on the sidewalk of the city waiting for an ambulance that arrived 20 minutes too late. As far as I could tell, he was a fairly typical, and none the less important, inhabitant of skid row. His world came to an abrupt and unnecessary end because of the casual cruelty of a few youths.

This work was supported in part by Public Health Service Grant 1 R0 1 MH21303-02 from the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Studies in Crime and Delinquency. R. Kirkland Schwitzgebel was principal investigator and A. Louis McGarry was coprincipal investigator.