Drug‐associated psychoses and criminal responsibility

Abstract

At present, the law draws a distinction when assigning criminal responsibility to those who commit offences while experiencing psychotic symptoms: if the symptoms are believed to arise because of ingesting drugs (an external cause), the offender is generally convicted of the offence; if the symptoms arise from a mental illness (an internal cause), the offender may be afforded a defence of insanity. In practice, drawing such a distinction can be problematic. There are difficulties for example in determining criminal responsibility when the use of drugs is followed by the emergence of a psychotic illness process that then continues to have an independent existence even in the absence of the ongoing substance use. This article analyses legal, policy, and expert witness perspectives relating to liberal, conservative, and intermediate approaches to this problematic area of jurisprudence.

Drunk, dangerous and delusional: how legal concept‐creep risks overcriminalization

“…It is not our aim to relitigate Taj here, or to argue that the forensic experts assisting the court misattributed his delusions at the time of his assault on Awain to ‘drug or alcohol‐induced psychotic disorder’; which, in itself, is used by some as a catch‐all to refer to psychosis and delusions associated in some way with the acute or chronic use of alcohol or drugs [42,43]. It is simply to contend that the legal assumptions made in Taj are problematic: problematic in general, setting a strict legal threshold on uncertain clinical diagnostic grounds; and uncertain on the facts of Taj itself.…”

Expertise psychiatrique : quelle est la responsabilité pénale en cas de consommation de cannabis ?

“…Ces résultats sont en contradiction avec ce qu'on pourrait attendre en France, où à l'image de l'alcool, la prise de toxique et, dans ce cas, de cannabis ne serait en soi pas un facteur et des experts dans ce cas précis [102] . Mots clefs : cannabis, responsabilité pénale, adulte, discernement…”

An international perspective on criminal responsibility and mental illness.

“…In the United Kingdom, North America, and Australasia, the concept of mental illness has been poorly operationalized in legislation and case law related to criminal responsibility, which can be problematic for evaluators seeking to provide an opinion on whether a defendant’s mental condition was sufficient to mitigate culpability for a criminal act; this may be due in part to mental condition being defined by the courts as a legal construct instead of being operationalized by mental health professionals as a medical construct (Allnutt et al, 2007; Carroll, McSherry, Wood, & Yannoulidis, 2008). For example, Allnutt and colleagues (2007) describe “disease of the mind,” “mental disease,” “mental impairment,” and “mental dysfunction” as samples of related but vague and incomplete constructs used to describe an impairing mental condition in various jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand.…”