Persecuting the Prophets: Inequality, Insanity and Incarceration

Abstract

It is a truism that crime is a reality constructed by those interests powerful enough to create the definitions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. This chapter reminds us that mental illness is constructed in the same way and by those same interests. It should serve as no surprise, then, that those diagnosed as mentally ill are far more likely to go to jail or prison than to be consigned to a clinic, hospital, or asylum. In this chapter the causes for criminalizing abnormal behaviour are located not in the organic or medical realm but in the realm of social injustice and the persecution of the prophetic. Thus, prison has become in many respects the new sacred space for those with a piercing, and hence unwelcome, social vision.