On August 22, 2025, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who had fled her country because of the Russian invasion, was stabbed from behind three times while seated on a train. The perpetrator, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., was arrested and charged with first-degree murder but was later determined to be mentally incapable of standing trial.
Cases like that of Iryna Zarutska bring into sharp focus the gap between abstract theories and concrete consequences. Here is what happens when dangerous individuals intersect with systems more concerned with process than protection. This tragedy is more than a loss of life; it underscores a recurring pattern of sheltering the criminally insane from logical consequences.
The phrase “criminally insane” somehow diminishes the threat they pose and rests on a profound misunderstanding. If anything, such a designation ought to sharpen our awareness of that threat. A person who commits violent acts within the bounds of rational calculation may be deterred by consequences, constrained by incentives, or rehabilitated through changes in circumstance. But a person who commits those same acts without regard to reality itself -- untethered from reason, immune to ordinary incentives -- presents a far more intractable danger.
Yet modern discourse often moves in the opposite direction. Once the label of insanity is applied, the conversation shifts almost immediately from protection to treatment and from accountability to sympathy. This is not because the facts have changed, but because the narrative has. The perpetrator is no longer seen primarily as a threat to others but as a victim of his own condition. The victims of his actions, meanwhile, fade into the background.
Such thinking reflects a broader pattern: the elevation of intentions over outcomes. But good intentions do not alter the underlying reality that some individuals are simply not amenable to rehabilitation. To assume otherwise is to substitute hope for evidence.
Historically, societies have recognized that certain individuals pose a continuing danger regardless of the language used to describe them. Whether labeled “mad,” “deranged,” or “insane,” such individuals were often removed from the general population not out of cruelty, but out of necessity. The goal was not punishment in the moral sense, but protection in the practical sense.
In recent decades, however, the rise of “therapeutic jurisprudence” has shifted the focus. The legal system increasingly treats criminal behavior through the lens of diagnosis rather than deterrence. This approach carries with it an implicit assumption: that with sufficient treatment, even the most disturbed individuals can be rendered safe.
But this assumption is not borne out consistently in practice. The very definition of criminal insanity hinges on the inability to distinguish right from wrong or to conform one’s conduct to the law. If a person lacks that basic capacity, then the mechanisms that normally guide human behavior -- laws, penalties, social expectations -- have limited effect. In such cases, rehabilitation is not simply difficult; it may be fundamentally unattainable.
In addition, the unpredictability associated with severe mental disorders compounds the risk. A rational criminal may weigh costs and benefits, making his behavior at least partially foreseeable. An irrational one does not. The absence of a stable framework for decision-making makes it far more difficult to assess when, or if, such a person can safely reenter society.
Despite this, there remains a persistent reluctance to draw the logical conclusion. If the primary purpose of the penal system is to protect society, and if certain individuals -- by virtue of their mental condition -- pose a continuing and unpredictable threat, then the appropriate response is not temporary containment, but permanent removal from situations where they can harm others.
This is not a call for retribution, nor is it a denial of the humanity of those afflicted with severe mental illness. It is, rather, an acknowledgment of the limits of what treatment can achieve and the risks a society can reasonably be expected to bear.
To ignore these limits is to impose the costs of failure on innocent people. When a system errs on the side of premature release, it is not policymakers or theorists who bear the consequences, but ordinary citizens who find themselves victims of preventable violence. In this sense, the romanticization of rehabilitation becomes not merely misguided, but dangerous.
There is also an inherent asymmetry in how risks are distributed. The individual deemed criminally insane stands to gain freedom if the system errs in his favor. Society, on the other hand, stands to lose safety. When the stakes are so uneven, prudence dictates that the margin of error should favor protection rather than optimism.
None of this precludes efforts to treat mental illness. Treatment should be pursued wherever possible, both for the sake of the individual and for the broader goal of reducing harm. But treatment and containment are not mutually exclusive. One can recognize the value of medical intervention while also acknowledging that, in certain cases, it does not eliminate the underlying risk.
The difficulty lies in confronting an uncomfortable truth: that some problems do not have tidy solutions. The belief that every individual can be rehabilitated is appealing, but it is not universally true. Clinging to that belief in the face of contrary evidence does not make it more accurate; it merely makes the consequences of error more severe.
Ultimately, the measure of a legal system is not how well it articulates noble ideals, but how effectively it protects the people it serves. When dealing with individuals who have demonstrated both a capacity for violence and an inability to conform their behavior to reality itself, the priority must be clear. Society cannot afford to treat such cases as experiments in optimism.
Preventing another tragedy like that suffered by Iryna Zarutska does not require new slogans or more eloquent theories -- it requires a return to first principles. A legal system that cannot reliably distinguish between those who can be safely returned to society and those who cannot has no business erring on the side of release. The burden should not fall on the public to hope that experts have finally gotten it right this time. It should fall on the system to ensure that it does not get it catastrophically wrong again. Until that priority is restored, assurances about treatment and rehabilitation will ring hollow to those who understand that the next preventable victim is not an abstraction but a certainty waiting for its moment.
Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com. Read more of his essays there.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/the_insanity_defense_a_public_danger.html
