This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understandings of mental illness and incapacity. With its focus on the complex interaction of legal doctrines and practices relating to mental incapacity and knowledge - both expert and non-expert - of it, this book offers a fresh perspective on this topic. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on mental incapacity from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of this terrain of criminal law, analysing the development of mental incapacity doctrines through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries around abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that the mental incapacity terrain has a distinct character - 'manifest madness'.

A shocking look at how the idea of romantic love can justify and excuse the killing of women by their partners, and lead to sympathy and reduced sentences for the killers. The author explores how stories of domestic homicide are told in the news, by the police, and in the courts, drawing from 72 cases which took place over a twelve month period.

This book explores the accounts given by white-collar crime offenders to defend their criminal behaviour in order to preserve their characters and social standing. It is based on in-depth interviews with 41 male and female convicted white-collar offenders, who were still serving their sentences in English prisons. Whilst a number of texts have been written about white-collar crime offenders, very few studies have attempted to approach this by examining the actual reasons and motives for their criminal behaviour directly from the offenders. This book aims to make further progress in this area. By exploring the participants' motives, opportunities and morality, this book will make a key contribution to exploring white-collar crime offenders' perspectives of their crimes. This book not only adds to the academic knowledge in this area, but also helps organizations to consider the strengths of their crime prevention methods and appropriateness of their fraud and security policies.

Secure Recovery is the first text to tackle the challenge of recovery-oriented mental health care in forensic services and prison-based therapeutic communities in the UK. Recovery as an emergent paradigm in the field of mental health presents a challenge to all services to embrace a new clinical philosophy, but nowhere are the implications more profound than in services that are designed to meet the needs of mentally disordered and personality-disordered offenders, both men and women. The chapters collected together in this book represent a cross-section of experiences in high, medium and low secure services and prison-based therapeutic communities in England and Scotland that have begun to implement a recovery orientation to the rehabilitation of offenders with mental health needs. Secure Recovery sets out a road map of guiding principles, practical and evidence-based strategies for promoting service user participation in their care and treatment and further demonstrates the adaption of traditional treatment approaches, and the development of innovations in rehabilitation, as well as tackling training for staff teams, and the evaluation of service delivery. This book provides a valuable resource and an inspiration to practitioners working across forensic mental health settings, increasing understanding of contemporary challenges and suggesting ways of moving forward.

The law has struggled for many years with the problem of how to accommodate those who commit crimes due to threats or circumstances. The modern ambivalence surrounding the defences of duress and necessity has its origins in the legal past. To date the defences of duress and necessity have been couched in terms such as compulsion, involuntariness and human frailty, resulting in the true nature of the defences being hidden. Psychologists and legal theorists have begun to re-examine the role of emotions in human action, including their effect upon behaviour and choice. In light of recent breakthroughs, Eimear Spain considers how the emotions experienced by those who act due to threats, both human and natural in origin, should affect the attribution of criminal responsibility and punishment. The understanding of emotions extrapolated in this book points towards a new rationale for the existing defences of duress and necessity.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court.
Volumes include the following helpful features:
- Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations
- Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls
- Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes
- Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference
- Helpful glossary of key terms for the particular topic
In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.
This volume focuses on evaluating the determination of disability status in the workplace. The reader is walked through every aspect of the evaluation, beginning with an introduction to the nature and legal meaning of disability. The authors offer evidence-based practice recommendations and a helpful overview of issues specific to evaluations for social security, worker's compensation, and other disability benefit programs.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court.
Volumes include the following helpful features:
. Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations
. Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls
. Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes
. Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference
. Helpful glossary of key terms for the particular topic
In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.
This book addresses the assessment of personal injury claims, and explores the history and importance of this process, the legal standards and the procedure for applying this assessment in court. Established empirical foundations from the behavioral, social, and medical sciences are then presented. Finally, the book provides a detailed "how-to" for practitioners, including information on data collection, interpretation, report writing and expert testimony."

Traditional techniques for detecting deception, such as the 'lie-detector test' (or polygraph), are based upon the idea that lying is associated with stress. However, it is possible that people telling the truth will experience stress, whereas not all liars will. Because of this, the validity of such methods is questionable. As an alternative, a knowledge-based approach known as the 'Concealed Information Test' has been developed which investigates whether the examinee recognizes secret information - for example a crime suspect recognizing critical crime details that only the culprit could know. The Concealed Information Test has been supported by decades of research, and is used widely in Japan. This is the first book to focus on this exciting approach and will be of interest to law enforcement agencies and academics and professionals in psychology, criminology, policing and law.

Justice-a word of great simplicity and almost frightening scope. When we were invited to edit a volume on justice in law, we joked about the small topic we had been assigned. Often humor masks fear, and this was certainly one of those times. Throughout the project, we found daunting the task of covering even a fraction of the topics that usually fall under the umbrella of justice research in law. Ultimately, the organization of the book emerged from the writing of it. Our introductory chapter provides a road map to how the topics weave together, but as is so often the case it was written last, not ?rst. It was only when we had chapters in hand that we began to see how the many strands of justice research might be woven together. Chapters 2-4 on the basic forms of justice-procedural, retributive, and distributive-are the lynchpin of the volume; they provide the building blocks that permit us to think and write about each of the other substantive and applied chapters in terms of how they relate to the fundamental forms of justice. In the large central section of the volume (Chapters 5-9), the contributors address many ways in which the justice dimensions relate to one another. Most important for law is the relationship of perceptions of procedural justice and the two types of substantive justice-retributive and distributive.

This text provides a complete overview of the applications of psychology to the law. Incorporating the contributions of social and clinical psychology, this new text presents the material with an objective view towards the complete scope of the subject matter. In its clear coverage of the fundamentals of this field, it is an invaluable introduction for students, as well as a reference for practitioners.

This book invites the legal and psychology communities to work together in solving some of our most pressing social problems. It examines four controversial areas involving people 's perceptions of others. The book is therefore a guide to understanding the valuable contribution of social scientific research in policy formulation in the law, and it addresses the role of psychology in substantive law and legal decision making.

Dramatic cases of child abuse and neglect are featured with tragic regularity in the news. The stories vividly demonstrate both the urgent need for improved child protection services and the unwieldiness and ineffectiveness of the systems charged with the task. To complicate matters further, the original intent of child welfare policy is becoming increasingly obscured as legal responses to child maltreatment become more complex, intrusive, and even contradictory. Fueled by a consistent narrative and a lucid ethical stance, Child Maltreatment and the Law analyzes the increasing role legal systems play in family life and traces rapidly evolving legal concepts as they apply to child protection. This unique volume helps readers: (1) Navigate the various layers of legal regulation - federal and state - involved in child protection and family life. (2) Identify variations and discrepancies in definitions of maltreatment and legal responses. (3) Critique the relationships and boundary disputes between the criminal and civil justice systems and agencies dedicated to children's welfare. (4) Analyze controversies (e.g., removing children from maltreating families) and other prime areas for possible reform. Child Maltreatment and the Law is a must-read for psychologists, developmentalists, sociologists, social workers, criminologists, and researchers focusing on family life as well as policymakers and advocates working within the legal system. The book is particularly useful for courses relating to child welfare law or child abuse and neglect.

This book details possible ethical situations and pitfalls that forensic psychiatric experts would commonly encounter when making a court testimony. Richly illustrated with cases from medicine, psychiatry, and law, this elegantly written volume examines the common moral ground that links these usually separate domains, and relates forensic ethics to larger concepts of morality and justice.

• expands traditional inquiry regarding the significance of psychopathology in the criminal process to include blameworthiness for sentencing, criminal competence at various stages in the process, and dangerousness
• pairs legal analysis with empirical research in order to promotoe integration of these two aspects of relevant inquiry
• addresses a wide range of participants in the legal, clinical, and academic disciplines

PTSD, pain syndromes, traumatic brain injury: these three areas are common features of personal injury cases, often forming the cornerstone of expert testimony. Yet their complex interplay in an individual can make evaluation and explaining the results in court extremely difficult.

Psychological Knowledge in Court focuses on this triad separately and in combination, creating a unique guide to forensic evaluations that fulfills both legal and clinical standards. Its meticulous review of the literature identifies and provides clear guidelines for addressing core issues in causality, chronicity, and assessment, such as:

- Are there any definable risk factors for PTSD?

- How prevalent is PTSD after trauma?

- How do patients emotions relate to their pain experience?

- Are current pain assessment methods accurate enough?

- What is the role of pre-existing vulnerabilities in traumatic brain injury?

- What exactly is "mild" TBI?

This book offers a welcome expansion on key concepts, terms, and issues in causality. It brings much needed clarity to psychological injury assessments and the legal contexts that employ them.

Focusing on PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain (and grounding readers in salient U.S. and Canadian case law), the book sets out a multifactorial causality framework to facilitate admissibility of psychological evidence in court.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court.
Volumes include the following helpful features:
. Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations
. Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls
. Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes
. Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference
. Helpful glossary of key terms for the particular topic
In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations. This book places juvenile risk assessment within the context of FMHA for juveniles, so those using it will find it particularly useful to incorporate into their evaluations of risk and needs for adolescents in the juvenile justice system."

Terrorism and torture are twin evils that have dominated news headlines - particularly since the horrifying events of 9/11. In this thought-provoking volume, scholars from a diverse range of disciplines examine the complex motivational and situational factors contributing to terrorist acts and state-sponsored torture, and the potential linkage between those two heinous human behaviors. They also consider the strategies that might reduce the threat of future terrorist acts, and the perceived necessity to engage in morally reprehensible - and often illegal - torture practices. With its integrated synthesis of contemporary theories and research on the complex dynamics of the terrorism-torture link, this is an authoritative source for scholars and students of psychology, criminal justice, law, media, communication studies, and political science. It will also appeal to students of other disciplines with an interest in the study of terrorism and torture.

In the UK, we lock up more individuals per year than in any other part of Europe. Many of these are suffering from some form of treatable mental disorder, yet too often, prison is viewed as the only option. Part of the problem is the range of individuals and specialities involved in making these crucial judgements. Government departments, health and social care and voluntary sector organisations, and frontline criminal justice and penal institutions are all engaged in the definition, management, and processing of the mentally disordered offender (MDO), leaving the invidual in 'spiders web' of a system - often to their disadvantage. This book presents a penetrating and thought provoking analysis of the forensic mental health system - how it operates, the people involved, the problems inherent in such a system, and the huge ethical dilemma of depriving an individual of their freedom. It brings together a range of specialists, each with considerable experience, who describe the processes involved in dealing with an MDO - from their own unique perspective. The book starts with a section on violence and risk - covering a range of ideas from the disciplines of criminology, sociology, psychiatry and psychology that contribute to an understanding of these concepts. The second section, on Forensic Psychotherapeutic Approaches to MDOs details the contributions of both cognitive and psychodynamic psychotherapies to understanding and managing the psychopathology, risk and interpersonal interactions of MDOs. Legislation, both statutory and case law, has changed substantially in relation to MDOs over the last decade and the third section on Law discusses these changes as well as the fierce debate that has surrounded them. The fourth section, on Ethics, develops some of these ideas on capacity, autonomy, vulnerability and responsibility. It describes common ethical dilemmas for professionals in forensic settings as it lays out the different duties involved in the different professional roles intrinsic to multi-agency working. The fifth section on Social Policy discusses the development of the concept of the MDO and how penal, health and social care institutions are designed to meet their needs. It illustrates how much has changed, especially in the last fifteen years and how much of that change has been driven by the risk agenda. The book concludes with an International Section - exploring how other countries think about anti-social and violent behaviour and how their circumstances and dilemmas have led to approaches to MDOs both similar to and different from those of England and Wales. The book will be essential for both students and professionals in the complex and ethically challenging discipline of forensic mental health.

Clinical psychologists and psychiatrists are increasingly being asked to prepare reports for legal purposes. These might involve issues regarding the clients own mental state at the time they committed the crime, or it might involve the neuropsychological effects of an injury to a third party. In addition, they might be looking at issues regarding impulsivity, and the role of underlying disorders, such as ADHD and antisocial or borderline personality disorders. These topics are typically the preserve of the field of forensic neuropsychology, yet for many, this discipline is seen as a highly specialized one beyond the scope and skill of the clinical psychologist.l
This book fills a major gap in the literature by providing a practical reference text for clinical and forensic psychologists and psychiatrists who are working in these important areas of forensic consultancy, and who need a working knowledge of neuropsychological assessment and legal processes. Topics include: aggression and violence; learning disabilities and developmental disorders--such as autism or ADHD; epilepsy; amnesia; alcohol and substance misuse, and traumatic head injury. In addition, the book looks at expert testimony, malingering, and other ethical and professional issues. It will help practitioners deal with the clinical and neuropsychological problems in the field and negotiate the legal labyrinths involved in issues such as competency, fitness to plead and stand trial, mental capacity, and mitigation.
With chapters written by leading practitioners and clinicians that provide a synthesis of key knowledge and best practice in their areas, this thought-provoking and pragmatic guide will be essential for clinical and forensic neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, and lawyers.

In recent years it has become apparent that mentally ill people are at increased risk of committing crimes of violence. Most writing and research about crime and mental disorder has focused necessarily on the immediate problems which confront clinicians and law makers - assessing and managing the future risk of violence. In this important new book the authors attempt to step back from these immediate preoccupations and describe the criminality of the mentally ill and try to identify the complex chain of factors which cause it. As part of their analysis they examine a unique cohort composed of 15,117 persons born in Stockholm who were studied from pregnancy to the age of thirty. While they conclude that we still do not understand exactly how and why persons with major mental disorders commit crimes, their findings make a valuable contribution to ongoing debates on mental health and criminal justice policy and practice.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court.
Volumes include the following helpful features:
- Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations
- Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls
- Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes
- Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference
- Helpful glossary of key terms for the particular topic
In making recommendations for best practice, authos consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.

The literature on domestic violence will often treat homicide as its most extreme outcome. The reality is more nuanced, with many domestic homicides occurring within a history of abusive behaviour. This book offers a much-needed synthesis of the literature on domestic homicide, covering its history; the theories supporting it; its various forms such as filicide, intimate partner homicide, parricide, siblicide and familicide; and its prevention. The authors explore the predominant theories that have been used to explain domestic homicides in general, as well as specific subtypes of domestic homicide. Each chapter then takes a chronological approach in examining relationships between victim and perpetrator in the most prominent types of domestic homicide. Drawing on the empirical evidence, it offers a unique insight into the dynamics of domestic homicides, and debunks some of the common stereotypes surrounding it. The book concludes with an overview of the main areas of prevention of domestic homicide and offers recommendations for professionals working in domestic violence services, medical practitioners and mental health services. This book will be of interest to criminologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists alike, and will be key reading for a range of courses on violence, abuse and aggression.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court.
Volumes include the following helpful features:
- Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations
- Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls
- Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes
- Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference
- Helpful gloassary of key terms for the particular topic
In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.