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Gender, madness and crime: The reproduction of patriarchal and class relations in a psychiatric court clinic
Abstract
This paper examines how forensic clinicians, particularly psychiatrists, help maintain the “constructed normality” of capitalist,
patriarchal relations in contemporary liberal democratic states. The specific focus is a comparison of decision-making about
accused women and men at a Canadian pre-trial clinic. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the authors argue that clinicians
rarely express overt bias towards “clients”, but their assessments for the courts are shaped by intertwined assumptions about
class and gender embodied in familial ideology which condemn most of the assessees to negative outcomes. Thus, forensic psychiatrists
make moral judgements about accused persons which are transformed by technocratic, medico-legal discourse into “scientific”
ones. In this way, clinicians individualize and depoliticize the deviance of their “clients” and provide the rationale for
decisions made by other carceral agents to sanction offenders.
... Firstly, in some trials the defendant's secrecy regarding their pregnancy and non-attendance of antenatal care was used as evidence of their "disturbed" mind which was the result of socioeconomic factors (Wilczynski 1991). Secondly, the defendant was constructed as naïve or "simple," confused, "uneducated," "unsophisticated," rural, or irrational (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs 2000;Chunn and Menzies 1990). iii For example, in the Fijian case State v S (2014), the defendant's concealment of her pregnancy and her giving birth alone was taken as evidence by the judge of her disturbed mind, aggravated by her "lack of seeking medical attention and counselling," therefore supporting an infanticide conviction rather than one of murder. ...
... Women who do not fit this construction are therefore abnormal and mentally ill (Chunn and Menzies 1990). In these constructions there also appears to be a failure to recognise that pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing occur "within a specific network of social relations" and institutions (Browner 2000, 774). ...
... A 'Good Mother' Who Acted 'Out of Character': Attempts to Reconcile Feminine Identity When the act or omission that caused the death of these women's babies (even if unclear or accidental) could not be incorporated within any normative gender framework, courts often had to look to other indicators of the women's character to make moral inferences (Chunn and Menzies 1990;Wilczynski 1991). Evidence of women's successful performance as mothers with other dependents played a significant role in garnering sympathy and was an important mitigating factor in sentencing. ...
Qualitative analysis of documents from 63 infanticide and concealment of birth cases from Pacific Island countries.
... En d'autres termes, la définition psychiatrique de leur situation ne constitue pas la voie d'évitement que plusieurs soupçonnaient. Par ailleurs, les effets du sexe disparaissent lorsqu'on procède à des contrôles pour les variables les plus importantes (nature de l'infraction, antécédents judiciaires, identité de la victime,...) (Cardinal, 1995;Chunn, Menzies, 1990;Menzies, Chunn, Webster, 1992). Comme l'ont constaté Chunn et Menzies (1990, 41) dans une des rares études portant spécifiquement sur le sujet, ce serait avant tout les déficiences personnelles des sujets, leur écart par rapport au modèle normatif dominant, qui constitueraient le dénominateur commun de tous ces justiciables, aussi bien hommes que femmes : ...
... // a déjà été traité...; il doit être traité...; nous avons demandé une prolongation..., nous avons demandé son admission...; une observation nous a permis...; une sismothérapie (électrochocs) a dû être utilisée qui a permis... ; les évaluations faites à ce moment ont permis... ; il sera retourné au Centre de prévention de Montréal en attendant son procès... ; il sera nécessaire qu'il y ait une instance légale qui puisse permettre l'instauration du traitement; il a reçu une médication antipsychotique... (Concordances tirées du discours sur les hommes) b) Lecture identitaire d'échec du rôle social L'analyse comparative des lexiques hiérarchisés des discours nous permet également de constater l'importance relative de la thématique du rôle social dans le discours sur les femmes alors que cette thématique est quasi absente dans le discours sur les hommes. L'analyse laisse entrevoir la possibilité que la construction de l'identité des femmes passe par une lecture d'un échec de leur rôle social ou, du moins, que ce rôle social serve de point de référence, qu'elle s'y conforme ou non (Chunn, Menzies, 1990). Dans le cas des hommes, on peut soutenir que l'identité est presque uniquement définie par la référence à l'univers clinique. ...
The examination of a gendered treatment by the criminal justice system has focused mainly on the measures applied to the male and female accused. Based on the hypothesis that the gendered construction of society leaves traces in the totality of institutional production, our article analyses the discourse produced by psychiatric experts for the court. Through a systematic analysis of 86 expertises submitted to a Montreal criminal and penal court, the article stresses the differences in the construction of male and female identity. The results challenges researchers about the necessity to reexamine current beliefs regarding the nature of distinction between male and female defendants.
... Social workers, educators, medical practitioners, and other experts play a key role in the process of creating, shaping and entrenching social categories, since they act as agents of classi cation (Conrad and Schneider 1980;Garland 1985). These experts not only de ne the building blocks establishing the real and symbolic barriers that separate deviance from normality and acceptable from unacceptable behavior, but are also assigned the routine role of patrolling these borders (see Chunn and Menzies 1990;Simon 1993aSimon , 1993b. The criteria created and utilized by experts are grounded in dominant perceptions of an "appropriate" moral and social order which should prevail in the patrolled community. ...
... Hegemonic groups delineated and patrolled the borders between socially de ned appropriate and deviant norms and conduct, as well as between approved members of society who merited membership, and outsiders whose entry should be eschewed or at least monitored and regulated. These processes, through which the moral and cultural texture of Israeli society was produced, de ned the "normalizing gaze" (Foucault 1979:184) by providing a rationale and justi cation for the creation of boundaries between social groups and the establishment of authorities empowered to defend them (Chunn and Menzies 1990). ...
Between 1948 and 1970, Israeli society witnessed a proliferation of discourses on juvenile delinquency, adopting a critical, historically informed approach. This paper shows that debates on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, as well as the inclusionary or exclusionary policies they promoted, were grounded within the project of nation building and interwoven in broader attempts to reshape the social and moral order of the new society. Reflecting an emerging conception of a "normal insider" citizen, a norm against which all individuals were measured, the discourse on juvenile delinquency created a hierarchy of "others." Middle-class juvenile delinquents were seen, in spite of their criminal acts, as deserving members of the new community. Delinquency in Orientals was attributed to their lack of readiness to participate in the socio-cultural milieu, something to be treated by resocialization. Arab delinquents were considered aliens and received limited services and treatment. Discourse analysis techniques indicate that this structuring of delinquent groups by class, ethnicity and nationality was part of a broader definition of the ideal moral traits of the Israeli citizen.
... (Kanter & Aviram, 1995). Scholars often warn that vague definitions in laws, in general, and in mental health laws, in particular, are more often than not influenced by stereotypes and social norms (Chunn & Menzies, 1990). A person's failure to behave according to specific expectations may be interpreted by various professionals as signs of mental illness (Menzies, in press). ...
... A person's failure to behave according to specific expectations may be interpreted by various professionals as signs of mental illness (Menzies, in press). Some of the definitions of dangerousness used by psychiatrists may reflect more about their own perceptions about, for example, the social roles of males and females than dangerousness per se (Chunn & Menzies, 1990). Mental health professionals may label as dangerous females who ''have uncontrolled sexual relations, '' seeing them as challenging the normal behavior expected of females. ...
... For example, Hodgins (66) estimated that women with mental illness were 27 times more likely to be registered for a violent crime than those women without. However, what is puzzling about such data is that one might then expect rates of violent crime to be higher in women given that mental illness rates in women have been repeatedly reported as both high, and higher than in males (67,68). Similarly, if mental illness were a risk factor for violence by women, then one might expect psychosis and other Axis 1 diagnoses to be frequently made in inpatient forensic services, but this is not the case. ...
The relationship between violence, gender and mental health is a complex one which is yet to be fully understood. Gender role stereotypes are social constructs that can powerfully influence and regulate human behaviour, including violence; and so it is likely that they also influence the nexus of violence management and mental health which is at the core of forensic psychiatry. In this article, we examine how gender role stereotypes might influence the practice of forensic psychiatry: specifically, in relation to women as violent offenders, as patients in secure psychiatric care and as clinicians working in forensic settings. We identify areas of development in women’s forensic mental health services, and examine whether patriarchal influences and gender role stereotypes may have inadvertently impacted upon these changes. We also consider whether these changes may maintain pre-existing barriers to treatment for both men and women.
... Indeed, this has been noted as necessary for forensic service users' recovery more broadly, in a burgeoning forensic mental health literature that draws on consumer/survivor work (Livingston, 2018;Simpson & Penney, 2011). Given the centrality of empowerment as a therapeutic tool for women, focus needs to shift from 'curative' models of recovery which focus on individual 'deficiency,' to capacity building which locates individual capacities and decision making within a wider web of material, psychic and institutional barriers (gendered, racialized, ableist and classed biases) (Chunn & Menzies, 1990). However, at present, the very premises of forensic mental health create significant barriers to the realization of these goals; forensic psychiatry relies on an individualized model of 'recovery' within the institution, thereby limiting the extent to which societal and relational factors can be addressed. ...
This paper critically interrogates the increasingly popular framework of Gender-based Analysis (GBA) in Canada, as it relates to psychiatry more broadly, and forensic psychiatry more specifically. Through a critical feminist and Mad Studies analysis, we argue that if GBA is to be anything more than rhetoric, it is necessary to ground policies and practices in the knowledge generated by women and service-users themselves. We further point to Mad Studies as an important field for research and an opportunity to look deeper into the ‘margins within the margins.’
... In this case, Participant 27's intersectional identity, age, socioeconomic status, educational background and gender might have exacerbated an already heightened power imbalance between the psychiatrist and the patient. As a young person, Participant 27's experience of the male physiatrist as "weird" or "creepy" could have been due to the fact that he evaluated her without any consideration of the gendered and class power dynamics that governed the interaction between the two of them (see Chunn and Menzies 1990). In doing so, the therapeutic relationship between the patient and the physiatrist was strained-hardly a recipe for improving her mental health. ...
This article discusses how mental health staff at a California juvenile detention center coerced young women into taking pharmaceutical drugs. Current empirical work discusses the negative effects of consuming pharmaceutical grade drugs. Some work has addressed how incarcerated individuals are forcibly sedated with these medications. We use a legal violence framework, however, to show how legal proceedings allow medical staff at our site to coerce youth into invasive therapy and eventually into consuming pharmaceutical drugs. We call this multiple stage process pharmaceutical violence. Based on 24 months of ethnographic research, we describe the three phases of pharmaceutical violence and how it negatively affects the youth in our study. Our findings shed light on research related to mental health, legal violence and the experiences of incarcerated youth.
... Since 1977, METFORS has been the site of numerous studies focusing on the relationship between clinical practices and the criminal law (Chunn & Menzies, 1990;Jackson, 1986;Menzies, 1989;Menzies, Gillis, & Webster, 1992;Menzies, Webster, & Sepejak, 1885b;Roesch, Webster, & Eaves, 1984;Rogers, Gillis, McMain, & Dickens, 1989;Rogers & Webster, 1989;Webster & Menzies, 1993). A forensic assessment agency situated on the grounds of Toronto's largest mental health facility, METFORS offers both one-day and protracted mental health evaluations of criminal defendants remanded from criminal courts throughout the city's greater metropolitan area (Butler & Turner, 1980;Menzies, 1989;Webster, Menzies, & Jackson, 1982). ...
Extends a previous study (R. J. Menzies et al; see record 1985-19087-001) on clinical predictions of violence using the Dangerous Behavior Rating Scheme by increasing follow-up interval from 2 to 6 yrs and supplying new data on prediction-outcome correlations for multidiscipline assessors. 162 accused persons from the original study who had been remanded for mental health evaluations were assessed using 3 criterion measures: subsequent violence, criminality, and general incidents. Statistical analyses revealed a range of predictive performance, contingent on several conditions, including identities of evaluators, categories of Ss, and length and context of follow-up. Even prognostications yielding the highest magnitude coefficients, reaching .53 in the case of psychometric forecasts of behavior in psychiatric hospitals, failed to account for more than 28% of the prediction–outcome covariance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
... Au plan de la recherche, au Canada, les travaux sur la judiciarisation des personnes ayant des problèmes de santé mentale s'articulent autour de quatre questions : l'arrestation (Holley et al., 1988 ;Menzies, 1987); l'évaluation pour inaptitude à subir son procès (Chunn et Menzies, 1990;Crocker et al., 1998;Hodgins et al., 1990;Ohayon et al., 1998;Rogers et al., 1992;Webster et al., 1982); les personnes déclarées inaptes à subir leur procès ou acquittées en raison de non responsabilité criminelle pour troubles mentaux (Hodgins et al., 1985 ;Hodgins, 1987 ;Rosenblath et Greenland, 1974), et les populations et services en santé mentale dans les milieux carcéraux (Decoste et al., 1985;Ferguson, 1988, Hodgins et al., 1990. Plusieurs de ces études s'inscrivent dans une perspective clinique et se centrent sur les liens entre maladie mentale et criminalité. ...
Résumé
L'accès à des services de santé mentale pour des personnes référées par la police représente un enjeu important pour éviter la criminalisation d'infractions mineures dont ces personnes pourraient être accusées. La police joue un rôle essentiel dans le choix de la réponse qui sera donnée à ces situations. Quand des mesures informelles ne peuvent être retenues ou que les services en santé ne sont pas accessibles ou que la personne les refuse, la criminalisation apparaît souvent comme la seule façon de régler le problème et, potentiellement, d'obtenir des soins pour cette personne. Cet article examine les travaux ayant porté sur cette question afin de tracer un canevas à partir duquel peut se faire une lecture des transformations récentes qui traversent le secteur de la santé mentale.
... They point out however, that there are gender differences in psychopathology which might account for this difference -women were more often diagnosed with schizophrenia or an affective disorder and men with a personality disorder. In contrast, in the only published Canadian research on gender and pretrial defendants, Chunn and Menzies (1990) and Menzies, Chunn, and Webster (1992) estimate that women referred for pretrial assessments resemble their male counterparts in psychiatric diagnosis as well as on a variety of other measures such as sociodemographic background, criminal status, institutional experience, and court dispositions. ...
This article chronicles the invisible crisis of the Canadian criminal justice system’s reliance upon critically marginalized populations upon critically marginalized populations in the composition of who is punished, and who is deemed punishable. Drawing on auto-ethnography, intersectionality, discourse analysis, and case studies, this article makes visible the filters, from suspicion to parole, which, from suspicion to parole, which move people with more privilege away from an increasingly permanent offender identity and move people with more marginality toward it. These filters are termed “intersectional filtering points”: their disparate impact emphasized to illustrate how disadvantaged people become offenders. Fundamental neoliberal logics contribute to the crisis persisting invisibly: marginalized people who become offenders are, therefore, seen as archetypal risk groups whose characters require regulating, undermining the widely held notion of a criminal justice system which impartially responds to illegal acts.
Mental health professionals intent on leaving their mark on juvenile justice and committed to behaviour modification forged a partnership with Toronto’s Juvenile Court during the 1920s. However, the routine practice of the court did not allow for intensive investigation of juvenile offenders or for careful study of the causes of delinquency. Conferences started in 1925 by W. E. Blatz bridged this gap by offering a number of advantages that could not be realized under the court’s busy routine. Taking charge of a limited number of offenders permitted psychiatrists to more thoroughly examine special cases such as recidivists, intensely debate treatment strategies, more carefully supervise individual cases, and test their theories about the causes of juvenile crime. Conference case files reveal that psychiatrically informed strategies of regulation were a novel way to respond to deviance and that gender-specific understandings of, and strategies for, appropriate conduct also served to reproduce prevailing ideals for working-class boys and girls. With clear ideas about appropriate conduct for girls and boys, mental health professionals attempted to create such standards in the delinquents whose cases appeared before them.
Since the late twentieth century, much literature and debate has addressed the use and misuse of science and expertise in the courts and the relationship between science and law in the determination of legal outcomes. Feminists have examined these issues in relation to the adjudication of criminal cases involving women accused (battered woman syndrome – BWS; pre-menstrual syndrome – PMS) and women complainants/victims (rape trauma syndrome – RTS) as well as cases in other areas of law such as sex discrimination and sexual harassment. Their research demonstrates that expert testimony reflects class-based, gendered, racialized, and sexualized assumptions and is clearly important to case outcomes. On one hand, judges often are swayed by expert testimony given at trial and/or submitted at the pre-trial or pre-sentence stage of the criminal process. On the other hand, non-legal experts often act like legal agents on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense. Indeed, the issue of competing experts is central to much discussion and debate about their place in criminal proceedings.
Parole was a critical and precarious phase for boys released from the Victoria Industrial School (VIS) in southern Ontario. Former inmates' conduct during the period immediately following their release revealed to school officials whether the boys had reformed and were prepared to conform to societal standards of manly conduct. However, before 1900 the VIS had no formal mechanism to ensure parolees did not regress into a life of crime. Moreover, without a systematic parole programme that would allow staff to oversee former inmates' behaviour in the community, VIS officials had no way of determining whether the school's reform strategy was ultimately successful. The school's unique approach to supervising former inmates included a system of correspondence and reports that attempted to monitor and influence the boys' behaviour. School officials' conception of a masculine ideal for working-class boys guided both the school's image of a successful inmate and the rationale for revoking parole.
Ashley Smith, who is typically presented in the media as mentally ill, was nineteen years old when she died from self-strangulation in an Ontario women’s prison on October 19th, 2007. In this paper, I explore how Ashley Smith’s actions and death were portrayed in four mainstream Canadian newspapers (Globe and Mail, Telegraph-Journal, Toronto Star and National Post). My aims in this paper are to critically analyze depictions of mental illness presented by these news articles and connect these portrayals to labeling theories. Two variables—the timing of the news coverage and newspaper political affiliation—emerged as being influential in how newspapers depicted Ashley Smith as mentally ill, through their use of generic and/or negative terminology and vulnerability stereotypes. I also discuss ‘alternative’ stories of Ashley Smith and examine their potential to challenge typical conceptualizations of mental illness, gender and carceral environments.
Between 1888 and 1950, 38 women were confined for indeterminate periods to British Columbia's psychiatric system under executive "Orders-in-Council". Enlisting clinical, organizational, and government records, the authors explore the psychiatric practices of control through which a male medico-legal establishment strove to comprehend and discipline these "criminally insane" women. The authoritative discourses and activities that shaped these women's forensic careers reflected a gendered conception of social order that was hegemonic during this period. Such discourses helped to fashion the images of women, crime, and madness that continue to permeate public and official culture.
This paper examines the construction of the female offender's image through an analysis of reports published in one major Israeli newspaper over the period 1987-1989 and in another during 1994. The study reveals that, while describing the offense or the formal social response to it, reporters tended to emphasize a whole range of details not directly connected to the crime or the punishment. These indirect details feminize the female offender, highlighting her physical appearance, her behavior, and her performance as mother, wife and housewife, even when she committed serious crimes. An offense perpetrated by a woman was portrayed as a single, incidental act. The numerous stereotypical descriptions minimize her role as a criminal, so that her master status is of womanhood rather than criminality. These descriptions remove the female offender from the public sphere, keeping her in the private arena and thereby maintaining the existing gendered social order.
When industrial schools were initially proposed in late nineteenth-century Canada, they were perceived to be a common solution for the neglected and delinquent working-class boy of the urban slums and for the Aboriginal boy in need of similar education, discipline, and moral and vocational training. This undertaking briefly encapsulated the twinned aims of Canada's nation-building project: to civilize and acculturate both the poor and the colonized to middle-class, Western, white and Anglo norms. As John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff remark of nineteenth-century British imperialism, the taming of the “uncivilised and immoral” indigenous African and British slum dweller were overlapping projects, with the “primitive and the pauper” seen as “one in spirit. …the sacred task of the colonizing mission was to reconstruct the home lives of both” by inculcating in their daily lives the bourgeois values of “modern domesticity.”
This article analyzes two recent trials of women accused of killing their infants. The legal strategies that employ gender of the defendant as a resource for constructing narratives of the offense are explored. This is achieved through analysis of discourses of the transcripts of the defendants' trials. Two salient discourses, patriarchal and paternalist, are identified in the article. Patriarchal discourses are characterized by the equation of womanhood and motherhood and by the overtness of the ranking of men over women. The paternalist gender management expresses itself in deference to the professional discourses that define motherhood-medical, psychiatric, and administrative. The evidence presented suggests that maternal trials of crimes against children provide a conduit for discussion of the issues that matter-the place and importance of motherhood in contemporary society. What is taking place in these trials reflects cultural neurosis over the ambiguity with regard to the definitions of the foundational relationship of mother and child. The article suggests that the trials of mothers accused of harming their children are symbolic of the problems involved in the contemporary regulation of mothering. © 2008 by Pacific Sociological Association. All rights reserved.
According to critical literature, psychiatrization is a central feature of gendered social control. It operates in a twofold
process: by orienting women to medical institutions rather than the penal system, and, for those women who do enter the criminal
justice system, by favoring an interpretation of their behavior in terms of mental health problems. However, the production
of gendered social control cannot be reduced to institutional decision-making; it also leaves its traces in various discursive
forms. One such form is forensic psychiatrists' discourse on the offenders they evaluate. Our study analyzes these forensic
reports as units of a computerized database. Our goal is to gain insight into the text by means of systematic quantitative
and qualitative procedures. Even though the expert discourse is shaped by specifications requested by the court, the discourse
examined here constructs two very distinct identities that do not correspond to stereotyped conceptions about femininity and
masculinity.
Mental health professionals intent on leaving their mark on juvenile justice and committed to behaviour modification forged a partnership with Toronto's Juvenile Court during the 1920s. However, the routine practice of the court did not allow for intensive investigation of juvenile offenders or for careful study of the causes of delinquency. Conferences started in 1925 by W. E. Blatz bridged this gap by offering a number of advantages that could not be realized under the court's busy routine. Taking charge of a limited number of offenders permitted psychiatrists to more thoroughly examine special cases such as recidivists, intensely debate treatment strategies, more carefully supervise individual cases, and test their theories about the causes of juvenile crime. Conference case files reveal that psychiatrically informed strategies of regulation were a novel way to respond to deviance and that gender-specific understandings of, and strategies for, appropriate conduct also served to reproduce prevailing ideals for working-class boys and girls. With clear ideas about appropriate conduct for girls and boys, mental health professional attempted to create such standards in the delinquents whose cases appeared before them.
It is now accepted wisdom among scholars of law and society that the law derives its strength by providing for two discourses. There is the discourse of the public culture: its normative sentiments about the rule of law provides a legitimating symbolic canopy for the work of police and other legal agents. There is also the discourse of the operational reality of social control on behalf of the state: the law allows police and other legal agents to take the actions they deem necessary, and yet be able to construe them and account for them in terms which make them publicly acceptable.
“Sex effects”—favoring women—typically found in criminal court pretrial release and sentencing outcomes have not been satisfactorily
explained. Drawing on observational studies and interviews with court officials carried out by the author and others, a social
control/social costs framework is presented. This framework revises Kruttschnitt's social control arguments and introduces
the idea that there are social costs to punishment. Hypotheses are tested on the impact of a defendant's familial status and
the interactive effects of gender and family for five court outcomes. The results show that initially significant sex effects
are explained by defendants' familial situations. Implications are drawn for future research on gender discrimination in the
criminal courts and for the problem of equal treatment of groups and individuals before the law.
Developed and tested a psychometric instrument sensitive to several facets of dangerous behavior (personality, situational, facilitating, global estimate, and rater confidence in judgment factors) among forensic patients. Two trained nonclinical raters used the scale in assessing the dangerousness of 210 patients interviewed in a pretrial forensic clinic. Reliability, item, and factor analysis refined the instrument into the 15-item Dangerous Behavior Rating Scheme. Profiles of patients during a 2-yr follow-up were constructed from contacts with the correctional system and 5 psychiatric hospitals and were rated on dangerousness to others by 9 independent judges. A Pearson product-moment correlation of +.34 was yielded between aggregated factor scores derived from the instrument and follow-up dangerous behavior. It is concluded that, given the limited ability of either clinicians or psychometric instruments to predict dangerous behavior and the socially constructed nature of the dangerousness phenomenon, predictions about future violence should be adopted into practice only under restricted conditions. A number of these limitations are summarized. (59 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
Examines criminological and feminist theory and looks at theorisation of women and crime and women's motive for offending and the way in which these notions impact on the processing of women in the courts and their explanatory accounts for offending and the impact on mitigation. Examples are selected from defences to homicide for battered women who kill drawing on available research and legal case law decision making. Examined as another case study is the treatment of women charged with prostitution and women charged with theft offences arraigned before Manchester magistrates and Crown Courts in 1981. In all cases is examined the type of mitigatory accounts put forward that rely on gender stereotypes.
Justice Unbalanced: Gender, Psychiatry and Judicial Decision. By Hilary Allen . 151 pp. - Volume 155 Issue 1 - Peter Hodgkinson
This article examines and compares women and men who successfully used the insanity defense in Oregon over a four and a half-year period. There was no significant difference between men and women in diagnosis or types of trial proceedings. A significantly greater percentage of women committed homicides, but since women also committed a greater percentage of misdemeanors, the average seriousness of crimes did not differ significantly between men and women. Nonetheless, women were released from hospitalization more frequently and after shorter stays than men. The authors discuss possible explanations for this apparent bias in favor of women.
I have worked in the area of mental health for fifteen years. Since 1977, I have been systematically gathering information on leucotomised patients with whom I have come into contact. All the clients mentioned attended a rehabilitation day centre over a ten-year period. Their case reports were read and they were interviewed in order to understand how a leucotomy could affect their lives and functioning, and why such drastic treatment was deemed necessary. The client group was composed of ten women and one man, out of which a sample has been chosen to be considered more fully.
This chapter addresses a number of medicolegal, ethical, and policy issues associated with the clinical prediction of dangerousness. A review of the major studies in the area of prediction research is undertaken, and it is concluded that an abundance of methodological concerns (including the low base rates of violence, the situational character of dangerous conduct, and the difficulties in operationalizing prediction and criterion measures) have limited the effectiveness of these investigations. Recent opinion pieces by clinical and legal authorities are considered. Some authors have maintained that the clinical prediction of dangerousness is so inherently tricky from a technical point of view that attempts to forecast the future violence of legal and psychiatric subjects are fraught with serious methodological, political, and moral difficulties, and that in so doing clinicians contribute to the excessive social control of mental patients and other “dangerous” persons. Other recent major contributors have proposed that methodologically sound evaluations of clinical predictions, though presently ensnared with error, could probably be substantially improved, that the accuracy of decisions can in all likelihood be enhanced through refined instruments and procedures, and that psychiatrists and other professionals are morally justified (and perhaps even obliged) to render these judgments about mentally ill offenders. Following a review of Monahan's pivotal monograph Predicting Violent Behavior, as well as more recent experimental and clinical studies of psychiatric decision-making, the discussion focuses on the concrete application of the construct in criminal justice and mental health institutions. It is argued that new research in this area should supplement traditional approaches designed to gauge the accuracy of predictions by concentrating on the organization and construction of clinical decisions in concert with the institutional experiences of forensic subjects as they are processed through the medicolegal apparatus. Incorporating quantitative and qualitative data recently gathered from the medical and correctional records of 592 persons assessed for dangerousness in the Brief Assessment Unit (BAU) of the Metropolitan Toronto Forensic Service (METFORS), a detailed analysis is provided of decisions about dangerousness rendered by police, forensic clinicians, and the courts. It is suggested that these predictions represent a principal vehicle for the legal ordering of and clinical response to mentally disordered offenders and that dangerousness is a salient issue in the medicolegal disposition of these individuals. Police, clinicians, and other officials routinely process subjects according to the subjects' perceived potential for violence; these decisions are based upon commonsensical categories that are widely shared throughout the system, and findings are communicated in a format and argot that function to maximize the official's accountability and professional status. As a result, forensic patients are exposed to a definitional spiral of apprehended dangerousness as people and information are transferred among courts, clinics, prisons, and hospitals, and as the concept of dangerousness is used as the organizing focus for the imposition of legal control. For these reasons, dangerousness is a critical concept for the understanding of clinical practice and official responses to criminality, and further research on this topic should be devoted to an understanding of these complex institutional processes.
While purporting to be benign, compassionate, and helpful, psychiatry functions as a social regulator. Its unrecognized inter-relationship with the social system allows psychiatry to participate in women's oppression, locating the problem within the individual woman and obscuring the invidious effects of social structures. Psychiatric theories can reflect and reinforce longstanding beliefs about women's status and role, contribute to her devalued status, blame her for her difficulties, minimize violence against her, and suggest that her behaviour should be shaped so that she can conform to the traditional role. A feminist perspective provides a different view and alternative treatment approaches.
From the Preface to the second impression: The reissue of this book, 24 years after its first publication, is a very welcome initiative by Free Association Books. When Critical Psychiatry saw the light of day, the debate over psychiatry which had raged in the 1960's and 1970's was well past its peak: sales of the book were modest and the publishers soon allowed it to fall out of print, although well-thumbed copies continued to circulate in limited circles. All of us who worked on the book are therefore delighted to see this old war-horse once more being led from the stables. We hope, of course, that the book will not simply be bought as a collector's item. Inevitably, after a quarter of a century many details have become out of date. However, the book's basic message seems even more relevant now than it did in 1980. Mental health services have gone on changing, and new research has continued to be generated - but the importance of the book's central topic has, if anything, become greater. What is this topic? In a nutshell, it is the discrepancy between the size of the problem of 'mental illness' and the inadequacy of responses to it. As far as the size of the problem is concerned, the figures cited in the original introduction to Critical Psychiatry have become even more alarming. In Holland, for example - a prosperous country rated highly by its inhabitants on 'quality of life'- one in four of all adults now experience a diagnosable mental health problem in the course of a year. Such figures are typical for Western countries. Worldwide, the WHO has estimated that depression will become the second most important cause of disability by 2020 - and in the developed world, the major cause.
Many explanations have been proposed for gender differences in criminal court outcomes, but none has been grounded in a systematic study of the reasoning processes used by court officials in sanctioning male and female defendants. Interviews with thirty-five court officials (prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers, and judges) are presented here to assess extant theory and to offer a reconceptualization of why gender differences may emerge in the course of "doing justice." The interviews reveal that the sanctioning process is structured by familial paternalism, that is, a concern to protect family life, men's and women's labor for families, and those dependent on defendants. Familial paternalism more accurately explains family- and gender-based disparities in sentencing than existing social control arguments, and it is distinguished from female paternalism, which is based on the view that women, as the "weaker sex," are subject to greater court protection than men before the criminal court.
Conscience and Convenience was quickly recognized for its masterly depiction and interpretation of a major period of reform history. This history begins in a social context in which treatment and rehabilitation were emerging as predominant after America's prisons and asylums had been broadly acknowledged to be little more than embarrassing failures. The resulting progressive agenda was evident: to develop new, more humane and effective strategies for the criminal, delinquent, and mentally ill. The results, as Rothman documents, did not turn out as reformers had planned. For adult criminal offenders, such individual treatment could be accomplished only through the provision of broad discretionary authority, whereby choices could be made between probation, parole, indeterminate sentencing, and, as a measure of last resort, incarceration in totally redesigned prisons. For delinquents, the juvenile court served as a surrogate parent and accelerated and intensified individual treatment by providing for a series of community-based individual and family services, with the newly designed, school-like reformatories being used for only the most intractable cases. For the mentally ill, psychiatrists chose between outpatient treatments, short-term intensive care, or as last resort, long-term care in mental hospitals with new cottage and family-like arrangements. Rothman shows the consequences of these reforms as unmitigated disasters. Despite benevolent intentions, the actual outcome of reform efforts was to take the earlier failures of prisons and asylums to new, more ominous heights. In this updated edition, Rothman chronicles and examines incarceration of the criminal, the deviant, and the dependent in U.S. society, with a focus on how and why these methods have persisted and expanded for over a century and a half despite longstanding evidence of their failures and abuses.
Describes and analyzes the tasks of diagnosing the "psychiatric realities of others" and of assessing dangerousness. Some areas covered are labeling theory, ethnomethodology, assumptions about diagnostic categories, cognitive style of diagnostic interviewing, and implications for mental health policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The 1st and 2nd editions of this book (1966, 1984) presented a sociological theory of mental disorder (MD). Seeing MD from the point of view of a single discipline, the theory was 1-dimensional. Since then, there have been substantial advances in the biology, psychology, and even in the sociology of MD. What is now most needed is an interdisciplinary approach, one that would integrate the disparate viewpoints and findings of the relevant disciplines.
Given the need for consilience (i.e., the interlocking of frameworks from the relevant disciplines), is there any point in resurrecting labeling theory, yet another 1-dimensional approach to the complex problem of MD? The author's decision that labeling theory still has value was based on the following ideas. First, while waiting for consilient approaches to be developed, headways can still be made with 1- or 2-dimensional approaches. A 2nd idea is that biopsychiatry, the dominant force in the field, like all disciplines, accentuates the positive. Labeling theory can be considered to be a countertheory, critical of the weakest points in the dominant theory, and focusing on issues that it neglects.
This edition attempts to provide a clear statement of a sociological approach to MD and integrate it with other approaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Publicado originalmente en 1963 por MacMillan Incluye bibliografía e índice
The Court of Last Resort looks at decision making in a mental-health court and at the dilemmas of treating mental illness while protecting patients' legal rights. Carol Warren spent seven years studying hearings in a large California court where people who had been involuntarily committed to institutions for psychiatric treatment could petition for their release. In this book she confronts questions of whether mental illness is real or only a label for societal control, whether the government should be involved in committing the deviant to institutions, and how the interaction of judges, psychiatrists, families, police, and other individuals and agencies affect the court's administration of mental-health law. Though the cases in this book fall under California's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, Warren's analysis of conflicts between legal and medical models of behavior is of national and international importance both to sociologists and to the many professionals who work at the juncture of mental health and the law.
"This is an immensely useful book for sociologists working in a wide range of sub-fields. It confirms Freidson's status among the leading exponents of the old Chicago tradition. This book is catholic in its reading, sophisticated in its arguments and cautious in its judgements."âRobert Dingwall, Sociology "As an attempt to provide a complex, wide-ranging account this book should be essential reading for specialist students, and it should act as a stimulus for the extension of both empirical research and theory."âAlex Faulkner, Sociological Review "Freidson's book is a concise introduction to the professions, challenging specialists with its puncturing of theoretically induced misconceptions and offering general readers a clear but critical entrée to the theoretical literature concerning this central aspect of modern society."âAndrew Abbott, Science "This is a stimulating and well-written book which opens up a new perspective on the professions as well as contributing to existing debates."âDavid Podmore, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Everyone knows 'drunk driving' is a 'serious' offense. And yet, everyone knows lots of 'drunk drivers' who don't get involved in accidents, don't get caught by the police, and manage to compensate adequately for their 'drunken disability.' Everyone also knows of 'drunk drivers' who have been arrested and gotten off easy. Gusfield's book dissects the conventional wisdom about 'drinking-driving' and examines the paradox of a 'serious' offense that is usually treated lightly by the judiciary and rarely carries social stigma."âMac Marshall, Social Science and Medicine "A sophisticated and thoughtful critic. . . . Gusfield argues that the 'myth of the killer drunk' is a creation of the 'public culture of law.' . . . Through its dramatic development and condemnation of the anti-social character of the drinking-driver, the public law strengthens the illusion of moral consensus in American society and celebrates the virtues of a sober and orderly world."âJames D. Orcutt, Sociology and Social Research "Joseph Gusfield denies neither the role of alcohol in highway accidents nor the need to do something about it. His point is that the research we conduct on drinking-driving and the laws we make to inhibit it tells us more about our moral order than about the effects of drinking-driving itself. Many will object to this conclusion, but none can ignore it. Indeed, the book will put many scientific and legal experts on the defensive as they face Gusfield's massive erudition, pointed analysis and criticism, and powerful argumentation. In The Culture of Public Problems, Gusfield presents the experts, and us, with a masterpiece of sociological reasoning."âBarry Schwartz, American Journal of Sociology This book is truly an outstanding achievement. . . . It is sociology of science, sociology of law, sociology of deviance, and sociology of knowledge. Sociologists generally should find the book of great theoretical interest, and it should stimulate personal reflection on their assumptions about science and the kind of consciousness it creates. They will also find that the book is a delight to read."âWilliam B. Bankston, Social Forces