According to this view, evil, if any such thing exists, is not an inbuilt human flaw, but a product of defective social institutions, which can over time be permanently improved.
But the staff unflinchingly describes the capricious and sometimes brutal practices that went on there, particularly during the prison's decades-long tenure as a so-called Institution for Defective Delinquents, when low-functioning and mentally retarded men, many never convicted of a crime, were held indefinitely.
In an additional one-sixth of the world's countries, these institutions, though somewhat defective, nevertheless provided historically high levels of democratic government.
The closure of institutions for 'mental defectives' and the growth of parental advocacy groups help to explain the increase in cases of autism since the 1960s.
The closure of institutions for 'mental defectives' and the growth in speech therapy services in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged new models for understanding autism in infants and children.
Lebanon's institutions are dysfunctional and defective; they have failed dismally to mediate conflict among rival groups, as well as to integrate rising social forces into the political process.
Gun buyers nationwide are required to disclose mental illnesses only if they have been committed to an institution or found "mentally defective" by a judge, he said.
And the Gun Control Act of 1968 has long prohibited the sale of guns to individuals who have been committed to a mental institution or deemed mentally "defective".
Under federal law, an individual is prohibited from buying or possessing firearms if they have been "adjudicated as a mental defective" or "committed to a mental institution".
(In Florida, the legal standard for blocking gun purchases is that someone has actually been committed to a mental institution or been "adjudicated mentally defective").
