In the United States society as a whole has adopted a sense of “justice” and has incarcerated people and punished crimes. While the justice system can be effective in some ways, it is not always perfect. Mens Rea is the main and most important element of the crime for which people are punished. Mens Rea is the level of guilt of someone who has committed a crime; it is the level of mental awareness of the person at the moment in which he commits the crime. There are four different levels for which we punish people in the mens rea aspect and which should be specified and written in the laws of the different crimes. The first and highest level is intentional or intentional, which is usually specified in the law as "with intent to", the second level is knowledge and is applied when no other level is mentioned, the third level is reckless and this would be a person who is aware of the risks of the crime and regardless of the risk commits the crime anyway. The last and fourth level of mens rea would be negligence or not acting or doing something to prevent the crime or not having done something that led to the crime occurring. All four levels of mens rea are directly linked to how we punish people because that is what the system looks for in a person who has committed a crime, what did he think? Did he do it intentionally? And so on. The mens rea in the vast majority gives the punishment a purpose, a legal reason why we are punishing and rationalizing the time that would be served and so on, it all depends on the person's level of thinking. In America people have this idea of ​​not punishing criminals for their state of mind but for their actions, but what the system really does is punish people based on their level of Mens Rea or thinking. Punish people...... middle of paper...... shown in the video, most of them due to limited resources and beds are not able to hold mentally ill people for a long time, they have a limited amount of time to be there and released alone into society where they are more likely to become homeless. These people have little support not only from their families, if any, but from the system itself. Prison is being used as a mental health institution and that is not the answer, most of these people don't understand that their actions were bad or some of them do understand but it's all a product of their paranoia or whatever the case of the disease and so on should not be punished when the punishment will not solve their mental situation. In most cases these kids have been arrested and released more than 20 times and represent just a repeated cycle that could be avoided if help and more institutions were provided to them..