Between Punishment and Care: Autonomous Offenders Who Commit Crimes Under the Influence of Mental Disorder

• The aim of this paper is to present a solution to a problem that arises from the fact that people who commit crimes under the influence of serious mental disorders may still have a capacity to refuse treatment. Several ethicists have argued that the present legislation concerning involuntary treatment of people with mental disorder is discriminatory and should change to the effect that psychiatric patients can refuse care on the same grounds as patients in somatic care. However, people with mental disorders who have committed crimes and been exempted from criminal responsibility would then fall outside the scope of criminal justice as well as that of the psychiatric institutions if they were to refuse care. In this paper, I present and develop a solution to how society should deal with this group of people, called Advance criminal responsibility. The basic idea being that if a person with a potentially responsibility exempting psychiatric condition refuses care, that person is responsible for any future criminal acts which are due to the mental disorder.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik -- Juridik och samhälle (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law -- Law and Society (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Autonomy

Criminal responsibility

Mental disorder

Involuntary

treatment

Insanity defence

Decision-making capacity

decision-making

violence

health

responsibility

flunitrazepam

capacity

alcohol

people

abuse

Government & Law

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)