A system that excuses every crime protects no one

Lindsay Clancy admits that she killed her three children—Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her defense argues that postpartum psychosis left her unable to understand that her actions were wrong. Prosecutors contend that she planned the killings and knew exactly what she was doing. On Thursday, the Massachusetts jury reported that it was deadlocked.

The jury must decide whether Clancy was legally responsible. But the moral order should be clear: three children were killed, and their lives outweigh society’s concern for the person who killed them. Mental illness may explain violent conduct and, in rare cases, diminish criminal responsibility. It cannot make the victims secondary.

Too often, the justice system reverses that order. The offender’s childhood, addiction, diagnosis, intentions and prospects for rehabilitation fill the public record. The victims become names in an opening paragraph. Compassion flows toward the person who caused the harm, while the dead and injured are treated as facts that cannot be changed.

This is not compassion. It is the displacement of compassion from the innocent to the dangerous. A humane society should treat mental illness, but its first obligation is to protect people who have harmed no one. When those duties conflict, public safety must prevail.

The pattern extends beyond one terrible case. Americans repeatedly read about violence committed by people with long records of arrests, convictions, probation violations or psychiatric crises. In a Bureau of Justice Statistics study of prisoners released in 34 states in 2012, 62 percent were arrested within three years and 71 percent within five years. An earlier study found that one-sixth of released prisoners accounted for nearly half of almost 1.2 million arrests over five years. A relatively small number of people can inflict an enormous share of repeated harm.

A justice system worthy of the name would act on that knowledge. Dangerous repeat offenders should not receive endless chances to create new victims. Probation, parole and pretrial release are judgments about risk, not entitlements. When officials ignore a demonstrated pattern of violence, the eventual victim bears the cost of their leniency.

Serious mental illness does not erase the state’s duty; it changes the form that duty may take. The Government Accountability Office has found that prisoners with serious mental illness face treatment gaps after release and higher rates of return to prison. States need secure psychiatric beds, court-ordered treatment and sustained supervision for people who cannot live safely without them. Leaving a dangerous person untreated and free is not mercy. It is abandonment of that person and everyone placed in his path.

Treatment and confinement can coexist. If an offender is criminally responsible, mental illness can be treated in prison. If illness eliminates legal responsibility, secure psychiatric commitment can protect the public while recognizing diminished culpability. The label on the institution matters less than the result: a person who remains dangerous should not be free to harm again.

Cora, Dawson and Callan were not circumstances in their mother’s story. They were three human beings entitled to protection. Whatever verdict the jury reaches under Massachusetts law, their deaths must remain more important than Clancy’s comfort, freedom or future. Any system that cannot say so has lost sight of whom justice is for.

America does not have to choose between accountability and treatment. It must understand the condition, judge the conduct and contain the danger—in that order, and always with the innocent at the center. A system that explains violence while exposing the public to more of it is not humane. It has simply chosen whose suffering counts.