NCJ Number
83455
Editor(s)
H J Vetter,
R W Rieber
Date Published
1980
Length
398 pages
Annotation
A series of essays deals with psychiatric and psychological interpretations of criminality, psychodiagnosis, incompetency and insanity, diagnostic assessments, psychiatric disorders and criminality, treating the criminal offender, and summaries of judicial decisions relating to forensic psychiatry and psychology.
Abstract
The opening section outlines issues examined throughout the book. The issues include (1) how criminal justice, psychiatry, and psychology determine legally and clinically whether a suspect or offender is sane, competent to stand trial, dangerous, or mentally ill; (2) whether psychiatric and psychological evaluations of an offender's state of mind are valid legally or medically; and (3) whether contemporary penology opts for medical and legal punishment (psychosurgery and capital punishment) or treatment (therapy and civil commitment). The second section presents essays by researchers who had themselves committed to mental hospitals where they were diagnosed as schizophrenic and psychotic. Although the selections in this section seem to deal with invalid diagnostic and mental health practices, they also focus on human perceptions of behavior, so they are implicitly instructive to anyone, such as the police, whose actions flow from their own perceptions of human behavior. References accompany each presentation, and a bibliography of about 130 listings is provided, along with a subject index. (Publisher abstract modified)