Suchergebnisse

Mental health and crime -- Crime -- Mental disorder -- Are mental disorder and crime related? -- Types of crime -- Mental disorder and violence -- Symptoms and causality -- Causal mechanisms, criminology and mental disorder -- Human rights and mentally disordered offenders -- Deprivation of liberty -- Mental disorder and detention : a perspective from prison -- The intersection between penality and therapeutic detention : indeterminate sentences for public protection -- Medical treatment : offenders, patients and their capacity -- Individual and personal consequences : the case of smoking -- Impossible paradoxes -- Treatment, mental disorder, crime, responsibility and punishment -- Fitness to plead -- Dangerous and severe personality disorder -- Culpability and treatment : chasing dragons? -- Conclusions.

Does mental disorder cause crime? Does crime cause mental disorder? This text examines the nature of the relationship between mental disorder and crime, and concludes that the broad definition of mental disorder, and the widespread occurrence of offending would make unlikely any definitive or easy answer to these questions.

The short answer to this is no. Whilst it may be possible to be certain about the occurrence of some events, the prediction of decision-making requires caution and qualification. Yet past practice can be a good guide to making informed guesses about the future. Accordingly, this article addresses the question of whether what we know about how practitioners make decisions in respect of current mental health law can help us to understand how the government's latest proposals for reforming mental health law are likely to fare. Two main issues are discussed: first, the nature of the proposed criteria; and second, the nature of the process, who will get involved with whom? The article concludes with some miscellaneous observations and engages in some autopoietically inspired kite-flying.

This article examines the Sentencing Council's recent definitive guideline on what reductions in sentence can be offered for a guilty plea. We argue that its emphasis on facilitating early guilty pleas represents more than just an incentive to those intending to plead guilty and poses significant risks for defendants with vulnerabilities. The article questions whether the guideline can amount to an inducement to plead guilty which places uneven burdens on defendants and fails to pay due regard to the duties owed by public authorities under the Equality Act 2010. In so doing it asks questions about the integrity of the criminal justice process and argues that issues of cost‐efficiency and the constructed interests of victims may have outweighed both the rights of those with vulnerabilities and the objectives of the legislative framework designed to protect them. The issues raised are universally relevant to any system that favours defendants who offer guilty pleas. 'At present something of the order of 75 per cent of all Crown Court cases result in pleas of guilty; if in all those cases the defendants were out of defiance or otherwise to insist on each detail of the case being proved to the hilt the administration of criminal justice would be in danger of collapse', Lord Justice Hughes in R v David Caley and others.1

"Bringing together a range of leading social scientists and criminologists, this volume explores a number of key themes raised by the work of Robert Reiner. Arguably the leading policing scholar of his generation, Reiner's work over some 40 years has ranged broadly in this field, taking in the study of police history, culture, organisation, elites and relationships with the media. Always carefully situated within an analysis of the changing socio-political circumstances of policing and crime control, Robert Reiner's scholarship has been path-breaking in its impact. The 13 original essays in this volume are testament to Reiner's influence. Although reflecting the primarily British bent within his work, the essays also draw on contributors from Australia, Europe, South Africa and the United States to explore some of the leading debates of the moment. These include, but are not limited to, the impact of neo-liberalism on crime control and the challenges for modern social democracy; police culture, equality and political economy; new media and the future of policing; youth, policing and democracy, and the challenges and possibilities posed by globalisation in the fields of policing and security"--Provided by publisher