The Medicalization of Criminal Law Reform in Imperial Germany

The Medicalization of Wilhelmine and Weimar Juvenile Justice Reconsidered

“…Richard Wetzell has argued that the readiness of penal reformers around Franz von Liszt to curtail the legal rights of defendants in the interests of social defense paved the way for an alliance of forensic medicine and state power that "made possible the transformation of the traditionally antagonistic relationship between law and psychiatry into the symbiotic one that came to be the hallmark of criminal justice in the age of criminology." 75 Although Wetzell's argument should apply to German juvenile justice, I have tried to show that German juvenile justice before 1933, with all of its contradictions, ultimately becomes intelligible only if we take into account not only the convergence but also the collision of forensic psychiatry and a liberal commitment to the rule-of-law tradition. Although forensic psychiatry, with its ominously imaginative theories and diagnoses, insinuated itself into juvenile justice and was sustained by the hygienic vision of German society endorsed by penal reform, it was nonetheless forced in the juvenile justice system to contend with and accommodate different holdover habits and values in support of certain guarantees promised by law, even if the implementation of these habits and values was increasingly threatened by erosion.…”

Psychiatry Beyond the Asylum: The Origins of German Military Psychiatry Before World War I

“…32 This public debate intensified significantly around 1900, mainly in the context of criminal law reform. 33 Since the 1890s an anti-psychiatric movement had strongly criticized psychiatrists for their presumably arbitrary diagnoses and restrictive custody practices, and the term 'anti-psychiatry' was already a catchword at the turn of the century. 34 The movement consisted of a heterogeneous collection of political interests, bringing together liberal politicians, people with a religious or theological background, and civil rights lawyers.…”

Madness and crime: Historical perspectives on forensic psychiatry

“…There is, however, a notable gap in the literature: the twentiethcentury development of forensic psychiatry and criminology, occupying the border-area of the medical and psychological sciences on the one hand and the administration of justice and penal regimes on the other, has received little systematic attention by scholars. The bulk of historical studies on forensic psychiatry and criminology concerns the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see for example Barras & Bernheim, 1990;Becker, 2002;Becker & Wetzell, 2006;Chauvaud, 2000;Chauvaud & Dumoulin, 2003;Colaizzi, 1989;Eigen, 1995Eigen, , 2003Eigen, , 2004Forshaw & Rollin, 1990;Foucault, 1975Foucault, , 1978aGibson, 2002;Goldstein, 1987Goldstein, , 1998Guarnieri, 1991;Guignard, 2006Guignard, , 2010Harding, 1993;Harris, 1989;Kaufmann, 1993;Mohr, 1997;Mucchielli, 1995;Nye, 1984;Prior, 2008;Renneville, 1999Renneville, , 2003Renneville, , 2006Robinson, 1996;Savoja, Godet, & Dubuis, 2008-2009Skalevag, 2006;Smith, 1981Smith, , 1985Smith, , 1988Smith, , 1989Ward, 1997Ward, , 1999Wetzell, 1996Wetzell, , 2000…”