Through the lens of negligent homicide, the premature deaths of people with serious mental illness can be understood as the foreseeable consequence of repeated failures by institutions and policymakers to meet a known duty of care. This framework does not imply a desire to eliminate the population. Instead, it frames the problem as potentially culpable negligence on a massive scale: preventable deaths resulting from decisions made despite clear warning signs and longstanding evidence of harm.

Through the lens of negligent homicide, the issue is understood not as an attempt to destroy a group, but as the foreseeable causing of death through a failure to exercise a duty of care.

The Basic Idea of Negligent Homicide

1. A person or institution owes a duty of care.
2. That duty is breached.
3. The breach creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death.
4. Death results.
5. The risk was foreseeable.

The key mental state is negligence rather than purpose or desire to kill.

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Applying This Framework to Mental Health Policy

• Governments have a duty to provide minimally adequate treatment for people with SMI's.
• Officials were repeatedly warned that dismantling hospital systems without building alternatives would lead to homelessness, incarceration, and early death.
• Despite this knowledge, funding and support remained inadequate.
• Large numbers of preventable deaths followed.

Under this view, the issue resembles systemic negligence resulting in loss of life.

This framework focuses on what policymakers knew or should have known.

If decision-makers understood that certain policies would predictably produce premature deaths and continued them anyway, the conduct can be characterized as reckless or grossly negligent, even if death was not the intended goal.

This is often closer to what scholars such as Andrew Scull are arguing.

LLM