The Role of Suicide Murders in the Penal Reform Debates

2012 ◽  
pp. 162-165
Keyword(s):  
2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Wetzell

This article presents an overview and analysis of the relationship of psychiatry and criminal justice in three different areas: the role of medical expert testimony in criminal trials; the role of psychiatrists in criminological research; and the influence of psychiatry on the penal reform movement. The first section argues that the increased use of medical expert testimony in the criminal courts demonstrates the increasing social acceptance of the psychiatric claim that borderline mental abnormalities were widespread and frequently connected to criminal behaviour. The second section examines the reasons why psychiatrists became so interested in research into the causes of criminal behaviour, and relates this interest to psychiatrists’ efforts to expand their professional territory. The third section argues that psychiatry exerted an important influence on the penal reform agenda. Not only was psychiatry crucial to the treatment of mentally deficient offenders, but the penal reformers’ demand to make every offender’s punishment dependent on his ‘social prognosis’ promised to give psychiatric expertise a central role in criminal justice. The article’s conclusion examines to what extent it makes sense to speak of a medicalization of criminal justice in this period.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brown

This article examines the conditions of penal optimism behind suggestions that the penal expansionism of the last three decades may be at a ‘turning point’. The article proceeds by outlining David Green’s suggested catalysts of penal reform and considers how applicable they are in the Australian context. Green’s suggested catalysts are: the cycles and saturation thesis; shifts in the dominant conception of the offender; the GFC and budgetary constraints; the drop in crime; the emergence of the prisoner re-entry movement; apparent shifts in public opinion; the influence of evangelical Christian ideas and the Right on Crime initiative. The article then considers a number of other possible catalysts or forces: the role of trade unions; the role of courts; the emergence of recidivism as a political issue; the influence of ’evidence based’/’what works’’ discourse; and the emergence of justice reinvestment (JR). The article concludes with some comments about the capacity of criminology and criminologists to contribute to penal reductionism, offering an optimistic assessment for the prospects of a reflexive criminology that engages in and engenders a wider politics around criminal justice issues.


JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (12) ◽  
pp. 1005-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Fernbach
Keyword(s):  

JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. Van Metre

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Craig McGarty ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Catherine E. Amiot ◽  
Fathali M. Moghaddam

AbstractWhitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefen Beeler-Duden ◽  
Meltem Yucel ◽  
Amrisha Vaish

Abstract Tomasello offers a compelling account of the emergence of humans’ sense of obligation. We suggest that more needs to be said about the role of affect in the creation of obligations. We also argue that positive emotions such as gratitude evolved to encourage individuals to fulfill cooperative obligations without the negative quality that Tomasello proposes is inherent in obligations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten

Abstract The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Parr

Abstract This commentary focuses upon the relationship between two themes in the target article: the ways in which a Markov blanket may be defined and the role of precision and salience in mediating the interactions between what is internal and external to a system. These each rest upon the different perspectives we might take while “choosing” a Markov blanket.


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