NCJ Number
187427
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2001 Pages: 141-170
Date Published
March 2001
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This study examines the criminalization of physician violence.
Abstract
The violent victimization of medical patients resulting from reckless or negligent physician care has traditionally remained beyond the reach of criminal law. The professional nature of the doctor-patient relationship, as well as the existence of civil and peer-initiated sanctions, has insulated doctors from criminal prosecution. The study examines whether this traditional immunity remains intact. It identifies several factors which, when considered together, indicate physicians' increasing vulnerability to criminal prosecution. It includes details of a search which identified 15 cases involving criminal prosecution of physician violence, and examines the cases in terms of several characteristics that marked the prosecutions. The study concludes that these events may be the beginning of the use of the criminal sanction against physician violence, and questions whether the public will be safer if the egregious medical mistakes are socially and legally constructed as "criminal violence" and are prosecuted. In this regard, it suggests the need for consideration of how criminal prosecutions might potentially affect individual doctors and the wider system of social control. Table, note, references