Craziness and criminal responsibility

Speed and contextual information of a crime-related video bias the responsibility judgments

“…Considering the direct link between severity judgments and sentencing, it becomes evident that video speed manipulation can have broader implications for the assessment of responsibility and the determination of culpability if associated with external contextual information. The concepts of the "harm" and "fault" principles, which are seen as complementary, establish the parameters for formal criminal responsibility (Morse, 1999). The harm principle suggests that the only activity that is significant enough to warrant criticism and punishment causes harm.…”

Changing Paradigms: Criminal Responsibility in Mental Health Laws of Pakistan and UN Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

“…Premeditated conduct of people can be understood as a result of natural causes in a scientific context but also imitates reasons for action. The human conduct is emitted by the intension, wishes and beliefs and this later approach is used by the law (Morse, 1999). Criminal responsibility is a phenomenon in which an insane person would be given special privilege and would not be considered responsible for his criminal act.…”

Mental Health Courts

“…In the mind of critics, the former assumption poses legitimacy concerns for the whole MHC model (Johnston, 2012). The latter, supported by social scientific data (Morse, 1999;Skeem et al, 2011), acknowledges a complex and sometimes tenuous relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior, highlighting the lack of mental health services and not an untreated illness per se as the prime driver of criminal behavior (Fisher et al, 2006).…”