Trivialitys, you seem to be ignorant of the phrase "against medical advice." Later, I'll move on to your lack of empathy for parents of small children.
Institutions, such as California's Atascadero State Hospital, don't have to and often don't separate those who hurt others from those who hurt themselves. The more important issue is, which of the inmates have to be there and which can sign themselves out against medical advice? That is quite a difference. A lawyer can tell some of the inmates: "Don't like it here? If you don't, you can get out very soon."
Those who hurt only themselves can leave against medical advice, therefore they don't have to share bunk beds and toilets with mean inmates for very long.
If you are over the age of 18 and are placed under 24 or 48-hour observation at a hospital emergency room because you have hurt yourself, and only yourself, then you have a lot of control over how much longer you stay in the hospital. Maybe you have to stay for the entire 24 or 48 hours, but if the staff insists you be admitted to their psychiatric ward, or to another hospital, then you have a lot of control over that -- as I said, as long as you are over 18. You can go along with the longer confinement at first then change your mind a few days later.
Compare that to the dilemma of a first-time criminal offender who has been arrested for a misdemeanor such as public urination, which poses a small yet significant risk of hurting another person. You can free yourself from police custody by paying whatever your bail is, or a friend or loved one can free you, but if you eventually get a 30-day jail sentence, you have to go along with it. After the jail sentence starts, your lawyer isn't going to appeal such a short sentence, and you can't sign yourself out of the jail against medical advice.
That has to do with the fact that public urination can hurt someone other than yourself, such as a child who could see your genitalia. It's unlikely that a child could witness a stranger urinating publicly after sunset, but as long as it can happen, public urination causes worse consequences for offenders than does a "hurt yourself only" crime such as freaking out inside your home closet while under the influence of PCP.
If you have done something very destructive to yourself, as long as it was only to yourself, such as a closeted PCP user whose parents force him or her into an emergency room, you can sign yourself out of any hospital against medical advice. A 48-hour hold in an emergency room isn't very long. After it ends, then the optional confinement begins.
Yes, there is such thing as certification, a procedure that is administered by someone called a "hearing officer." But during the last 20 years, these hearing officers have lost a lot of their power as lawyers learn to poke holes in everything they say. Any competent lawyer can remind a hearing officer that his or her client never was arrested or sentenced by a judge, thereby making the hearing officer lose the "case."
So the staff at Atascadero can mix together inmates all they want, but the ability to leave the place against medical advice depends on what you did before you showed up there. Who got hurt or could have gotten hurt -- within reason? Only the offender?
Distinguishing between who has hurt only himself / herself and who has hurt another person has a lot to do with empathy for a victim or potential victim. If you are the parent of a small child, and you drive the child to a drugstore at night to buy something that stops the child's coughing or sneezing, would you rather that someone who lives next door to the drugstore pee in front of the drugstore or that he or she stay home using PCP? Any parent would prefer that that person choose the PCP option. It doesn't hurt the child. Urination near the door of the store does. So if you get caught urinating in public, you soon find yourself in a frightening situation where you can't leave against medical advice.
Jeffrey Dahmer hurt other people, and he hurt many of them before the Milwaukee police officer questioned him about the naked man who was hysterically running around outdoors at night very close to Dahmer's apartment. So why didn't the officer figure out that Dahmer was hurting the naked man, thereby giving the officer probable cause? Because Dahmer was an excellent liar. Those who hurt others tend to be better and more frequent liars than those who hurt only themselves.
When loved ones forcibly remove a PCP user from a home closet, the PCP user cannot sit calmly inside an emergency room, look a nurse or doctor in the eye and say simply, "No, I don't use narcotics." PCP makes that calmness impossible.
But if you pee in public, nothing in your brain can stop you from calmly lying about it later. Police can and will use surveaillance video against you. If no such video exists, and the police must choose between the word of a parent helping a sick child at a drugstore, and the word of someone who is loitering alone, then the parent's word can be almost as powerful as video. The possibility of that offender hurting a child is small but significant. During the 30-day jail sentence that said offender very possibly could serve, he or she could be forced to listen to mean inmates screaming like maniacs and making threats at 3:00 in the morning, every morning, and the calm offender, guilty of public urination, cannot leave against medical advice.
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11 years ago
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janinemgaston
11 years ago
Oh, smell me. Your fantasy world includes some cockamamie bull about "the man who murdered my goddaughter who is serving life in prison."
That sounds like a combination of a lame Unsolved Mysteries segment and the movie Love and Death on Long Island, in which John Hurt's Giles character talks about his "godchild Abigail."
The people about whom I speak are dually-diagnosed MR/DD persons. They were committed to the facility through the court or by their legally determined guardians. They do not have the luxury to sign themselves out at all.
If you don't have time to explain what damage, if any, these people have done to others, as opposed to themselves, then your dropping of hints doesn't belong in a message board about Dahmer. That title reveals a lot within seconds.
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11 years ago
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janinemgaston
11 years ago
In Love and Death on Long Island, the character of Audrey suspects that Giles, played by John Hurt, does not actally have a "godchild named Abigail" as he says he does. Audrey suspects he is fantasizing in order to enhance ... hmmm, what was it? ... a murder mystery screenplay that can help the career of her actor - boyfriend.
I owe a lot to Wikipedia. The article on the short story by Indiana resident Betty Patrick, also known as Wildhartlivie, led to my fascination with her story itself. The plot has her aunt slowly getting sick over the years because of exposure to chicken poop on an Indiana farm. Tee hee! Reminds me of the backstory of the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood.
Nobody needs to Google the names in the Goddaughter Murder Mystery by trivialitys. I can "IMDb it." I don't need to Google it. Right?
BTW I just love Twitter. Several times, strangers have retweeted my tweets. IMDb can't give me that.
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11 years ago
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janinemgaston
11 years ago
My version of history? The role that the few people as deranged as Dahmer have played in "history" is debatable, so let's focus on the much more common causes of trouble: unhealthy lifestyles, heart attacks, veering from topic to topic to find the big picture, etc. Getting the big picture can be fun. Tee hee!
You never seem to pick on Eric-62-2, an IMDb regular who switches topics frequently within the same post. You can find him in recent threads on the boards for the movies Airport (1970) and Gojira (1954), also known as Godzilla. He is an evangelical Christian who rambles on about the bible. He also delineates forgotten show business gossip from decades ago, such as various phases of the mental deterioration of Dave Garroway, original host of NBC Today Show.
Eric-62-2 has been known to post some of his IMDb comments in the middle of the night. You, trivialitys, posted a reply here between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. But the medical profession and nursing profession say people shouldn't do such a thing at that hour. Most of those professionals also advise everyone against taking narcotics and FDA-approved medicine that make you stay awake all night. Even too much caffeine on an ongoing basis has been identified as dangerous by healthcare workers.
The connection between this message board and Jeffrey Dahmer allows folks to put these posts in perspective. Switching topics to get the big picture isn't in the same category as mass murder or cannibalism.
Prison psychiatrists spent a lot of time exploring Dahmer's past with him. Evidence indicates that while he was incarcerated, he reminisced with a fine-tooth comb as police detectives and then medical doctors listened closely. They wanted to know where some of the missing dead bodies were buried, and they wanted to find out the "why" behind the crimes, but the fact remains that the murderer got a lot of attention, and not just media attention.
Therefore, I have the right to visit IMDb message boards to seek out a virtual 1970s-style Esalen Institute group hug. It's OK to do that as long as I get enough sleep and avoid too many doses of narcotics and FDA-approved medicines. Habitual doses over a period of decades, in combination with chronic alcohol consumption, can cause heart disease and all that jazz. If you die from a heart attack, you haven't been murdered.
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