The APA believes retention of the insanity defense is essential to the moral integrity of criminal law, which purports to base punishment on a person's intent to commit the proscribed criminal act. The guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict fails to support this principle, and although it mandates treatment for offenders receiving such a verdict, there is no indication that the treatment of mentally ill offenders has improved since this verdict has been instituted. The APA favors a standard for legal insanity which involves an inability to appreciate the wrongness of the behavior at issue due to a mental disease or mental retardation. The APA is reluctant to take a position on the assignment of the burden of proof in insanity cases, since this is a matter for legislative judgment and further empirical study. Regarding psychiatric testimony, the APA favors permitting testimony about the defendant's psychiatric diagnosis, mental state, and motivation at the time of the alleged act, leaving the decision about to legal insanity to the judge or jury. The APA advocates the special management of release decisions for persons found not guilty by reason of insanity in cases involving violent behavior. Release decisions and the subsequent supervisory treatment of these persons would be entrusted to a multidisciplinary review board, which would have the authority to reconfine those whose behavior poses a risk to society. 20 references.