Mental Condition Defences And The Criminal Justice System

Criminal law has struggled to keep pace with developments in psychiatry, both in substantive and procedural terms, and it is widely recognised that increased inter-disciplinary discussion of mental condition defences is required in order to address this gap between the law and psychiatry. This edited collection comes at a time of review of this sensitive area of criminal law. The Law Commission for England and Wales recently placed its evaluation of insanity, automatism and intoxication on hold, while it considers the law on unfitness to plead. These reviews are set against the backdrop of earlier Law Commission reports on partial defences to murder which informed significant changes that were made to the law in this area under sections 52–56 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Recent developments in case law in this substantive area illustrate not only the importance of the role of the medical expert, but also that reform in this area is informed by ongoing inter-disciplinary research. This collection brings together medical and legal conceptions of mental disorder in order to appraise the operation of mental condition defences. In this respect, it provides invaluable and original insights into mental condition defences and criminal law.

Mental condition defences have been used in several high profile and controversial criminal trials in recent years. Indeed, mental abnormality is increasingly an important yet complex course of defence within the criminal trial process. In this timely study, Professor Mackay offers a detailed critical analysis of these defences within the Criminal Law where the accused relies on some form of mental abnormality as a source of defence/negotiation. Topics covered include the defences of automatism, insanity, diminished responsibility and infanticide; self-induced incapacity and the doctrine of fault. It also includes a chapter on unfitness to plead, which although not a defence has been included because of its important relationship to mental disorder within the criminal process. Drawing upon a wide variety of legal, psychiatric and philosophical sources, this is a timely contribution to a controversial and complex topic.

The Criminal Justice System is becoming a de facto provider of mental health care, according to a series of recent prison inspections and reports on policing and mental illness which have highlighted the crisis in mental health services. However, the pressures on prisons and other areas of the CJS mean that the needs of those with mental health problems are often overlooked. This book examines the experiences of people with mental health problems across all stages of the CJS and across all the points of contact – police, Courts and prisons between the CJS and people with mental health problems. Providing a clearly written, comprehensive introduction to the main themes in this field, it also has a clear critical edge highlighting the failings in the areas of penal and social policy that have resulted in increasing numbers of people with mental health problems being criminalised. Highlighting a very important social issue, Mental Health and the Criminal Justice System provides a thorough introduction to this subject for social work students and practitioners.

In this student-friendly text, a team of respected scholars balances practical knowledge of how the mental healthcare system operates in conjunction with the criminal justice system, with an analytical framework that looks at how the quality of that collaboration is reflected in the issues, processes and outcomes of both institutions. Professors and students will benefit from an accessible new text that informs and explores: The role of mental healthcare law and procedure in the criminal justice system How mentally ill clients are processed through the criminal justice system Mental healthcare terms, resources, and treatment programs Contemporary issues in mental health and criminal justice, such as the treatment of mentally ill juveniles inside the criminal justice system, and lack of full access to mental healthcare for at-risk groups Discussion of systemic interface and entropy, two central themes to guide student analysis of issues and examples drawn from real life Mental Health and Criminal Justice is designed with a wealth of features for study and review, including: Learning Objectives Framing the Issues Prologues and Epilogues that frame issues and provide vivid examples Key Terms, highlighted in the text and defined in the Glossary Text boxes that expand on points of interest Summary and Chapter Review Questions at the end of each chapter

By defining appropriate boundaries for the defence of insanity and the doctrine of automatism, this book presents a consistent and principled approach to the reform of mental state defences. In particular, by undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of the various factors that inform these defences the book concludes with several practical and robust reform proposals There are three objectives that underpin the suggested reform proposals. First, to ensure that an accused will be able to raise a defence of insanity for involuntary conduct arising from mental disorder even where he or she is aware of the nature and quality of such conduct. Second, to provide principled means by which to establish the criminal responsibility of an accused for conduct performed in a state of drug-induced psychosis. Third, to ensure that criminal conduct arising from a state of ’impaired consciousness’ does not automatically result in the outright acquittal of an accused. In articulating the competing demands that must be balanced in order to secure a principled approach to the reform of mental state defences the book will be of relevance to all common law countries.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understandings of mental illness and incapacity. With its focus on the complex interaction of legal doctrines and practices relating to mental incapacity and knowledge - both expert and non-expert - of it, this book offers a fresh perspective on this topic. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on mental incapacity from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of this terrain of criminal law, analysing the development of mental incapacity doctrines through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries around abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that the mental incapacity terrain has a distinct character - 'manifest madness'.