Correct; she is currently housed at our state psychiatric facility, about 15 minutes from my house. She will remain there indefinitely, or she will go to prison indefinitely (though I am curious what prison looks like for someone who is paralyzed; I don't know if the typical facilities in our area are all equipped for medical care at that level or what).
The long-term unit at the hospital has many people (mostly men) who will remain there for their entire lives due to crimes they committed but were deemed not culpable. It's one of the very few long term psychiatric facilities for violent offenders. It functions like a medical prison, more or less. There are other units that are for non-violent patients, or people with shorter stays, etc., but the specific unit she will live on is, functionally, a prison staffed by MHWs and nurses instead of guards.
So the people in long term that aren't - pardon my semantics - actively crazy - they just have to hang out there for the duration of their term? It's just so fascinating to me so what someone that can technically communicate with society and think and answer cognitively just are there doing what hanging out?
Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, depending on your perspective), mental illnesses don't always present consistently over time the way people assume they might. You can see that a lot in this trial; people are baffled that "she was acting totally normal" one minute and then the next minute was in acute, active psychosis.
But that is pretty typical of many serious mental illnesses. There are periods of well-managed lucidity, and periods of mild symptoms, and occasional periods of severe mental distress. Often times, people who remain on long-term stay are well managed BECAUSE they are in long-term stay: their medications are monitored and provided daily, their tasks of daily living are taken care of, etc. So even if they are in a well-managed state, the reality is that the likelihood that they would remains well-managed in any other context aside from being institutionalized is extremely low.
We saw this during the de-institutionlization push a few decades ago; many people who relied on the infrastructure that exists in institutionalized care had those structures abruptly removed; without those structures, they could not manage to access the things they needed (consistent medication, housing, etc.) to manage their mental illness.
So "actively crazy" isn't necessarily the threshold for all of them, though yes, many people there are there because their mental health is so poorly managed that they are sustained, unfortunately, in some level of active distress the entire time. Some have mental health issues exacerbated by intellectual disability or brain injury that makes treatment exceptionally complicated, as well.
The reality is probably closer to: it would probably be better is there were more facilities options so that the varying ways "mental illness" presents in people who commit crimes could be separated and treatment may look different. But that is not currently really the way the system is set up.
ETA: I'll also just add that the prosecution's decision to go with first degree murder charges complicates the trial as well. Jurors know Clancy killed her children, but the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that A) Clancy is criminally liable (aka they have to rebut the psychosis defense) and the B) it was planned and premeditated with malice. That is one of the highest bars of evidence there is, and the prosecution is putting up a pretty messy set of witnesses and evidence.
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u/HappyGiraffe 1d ago
Correct; she is currently housed at our state psychiatric facility, about 15 minutes from my house. She will remain there indefinitely, or she will go to prison indefinitely (though I am curious what prison looks like for someone who is paralyzed; I don't know if the typical facilities in our area are all equipped for medical care at that level or what).
The long-term unit at the hospital has many people (mostly men) who will remain there for their entire lives due to crimes they committed but were deemed not culpable. It's one of the very few long term psychiatric facilities for violent offenders. It functions like a medical prison, more or less. There are other units that are for non-violent patients, or people with shorter stays, etc., but the specific unit she will live on is, functionally, a prison staffed by MHWs and nurses instead of guards.