Should the Insanity Plea be a Legitimate in the Criminal Justice System?

Should the Insanity Plea be a Legitimate in the Criminal Justice System?
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Should the Insanity Plea be a Legitimate Plea in the Criminal Justice System?
The insanity plea in the criminal justice is there to be used for people who cannot be held responsible for their own actions, by way of mental impairment (Mental Health America, 2017). The idea behind the creation of the plea was to keep people from punishment where that punishment would not only be unethical, but also ineffective (in both cases, due to people’s mental impairment). There are, however, people who argue that the insanity plea can be (and is) taken advantage of by particularly unscrupulous people and their lawyers, in order to receive more leniency in the courts. This paper will aim to show that the Insanity Plea is a useful and necessary addition to the criminal justice system, using examples from Dahmer and Hinckley Jr.
Two examples of possible judicial fraud occur with Jeffrey Dahmer and John Hinckley Jr, respectively, which is partly why people are now rethinking the use of the Insanity Plea. Dahmer, of course, is famous for murdering and cannibalising (among other terrible things) seventeen men during the time period between 1978 and 1991 (Crime Museum, 2017), while Hinckley shot President Reagan to prove his ‘love’ for actress Jodie Foster (Taylor, 1982). The insanity plea was used...