A Pennsylvania judge was sentenced to 28 years in prison in connection to a bribery scandal that roiled the state's juvenile justice system. The Court tossed about 4,000 convictions issued by the judge between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.
You may remember; it was said that F-Type Prisons meant primarily liberalization of the prison system. Almost all of the services in F-Type Prisons except “primary services” are provided for a consideration, for a long time.
Although no companies in Turkey start to work from the basic structure, entrepreneurs stop at nothing. For example, Ministry of Health made a tender for building physical therapy, psychiatry and high security forensic psychiatric hospitals in seven provinces of Turkey. These hospitals will function with a build-operate-transfer model.
High security forensic psychiatric hospitals are preventive not like wards in prison. That’s why, Ministry of Health promised 90% occupancy rate for these hospitals in order to draw the attention of the companies.
It is reasonable for people who think the country looks like an asylum, already. However, the real occupancy rate is 65% according to the statistics of Ministry of Health. Well, what about the 25% of it?
Article 75 of Turkish Penal Code says:
Decision for imposition of security precautions is given by the court about a person suffering from mental illness at the time of commission of the offense. The insane people subject to security precautions under the court’s decision are sheltered and taken under protection for treatment purposes in the fully organized health institutions.
The second paragraph of the article says:
An insane person against whom security precautions are imposed, may be discharged from the health institution where he receives treatment under the court’s or judge’s decision if the report prepared by the health commission of the institution contains a statement that there is no risk to the community, or the risk is considerably diminished.
Nowadays, even commenting on social media means “commission of the offense” let alone, marching, protests and etc. When people “commit the offenses” and they are determined “insane”, they will be kept in these institutions as “precautions” until there is no risk to the community, or the risk is considerably diminished.
Ministry of Health promised 90% occupancy rate and it should keep its word, shouldn’t it? It can’t waste the public money, after all.
So, any action will be risky, the actor will be examined, labeled as insane and will be put in a high-security institution until there is no risk.
To start a witch-hunt and to label people as “sociopaths” and even existing companies that benefit from it can make a human crazy. It is not necessary to call people “terrorists”, anymore. (ÖE/HK/BD)
Click here to read the article in Turkish
