NCJ Number
69599
Date Published
1979
Length
226 pages
Annotation
This comprehensive introduction to the principles of forensic psychiatry represents a broadened treatment of the subject and is intended for members of the medical, legal, social work, and teaching professions.
Abstract
Based on 15 years of experience in prison psychiatry, the text describes specialized forms of psychiatric treatment for, as well as causes and prognosis of, illicit drug consumption, sexual deviation, juvenile delinquency, and psychopathy and alcoholism. An initial chapter sets the scene by reviewing the essentials of crime, including definitions of a criminal act, of guilty intention, and of the doctrine of malice aforethought, and ends by examining criminal responsibility and chromosomal abnormalities and crime. Court procedure and structure are dealt with, along with preparation of psychiatric evidence. Special chapters are devoted to the subjects of crime and its relationship to psychosis, psychopathy, subnormality, and psychoneurosis. In addition, juvenile delinquency is examined. The discussion looks at theories of delinquency, associating it with environmental conditions and biological abnormalities and injury, and reviews types of juvenile crime, statistics on juvenile offenders, and diagnosis of and prognosis for young offenders. Other features of the text are a chapter on memory, identification, and crime (the focus of which is on amnesia) and a treatment of several aspects of military psychiatry--brainwashing and indoctrination, battle fatigue, and exhaustion. Psychiatric aspects of assassination are dealt with, also. The text closes with a summary of the 1959 Mental Health Act of Britain and a tabular presentation of that country's Criminal Justice Act of 1972. Besides a total of 45 case histories used to define the ideas presented, the book contains tables, chapter references, and a subject index.