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SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell

Remodelling criminal insanity and psychosis through the philosophical, legal, and medical DIMENSIONS of the medical model

Alternative title: Ny forståelse av utilregnelighet og psykose: Utforskning av den medisinske modellens filosofiske, rettslige og medisinske dimensjoner

Awarded: NOK 13.8 mill.

Project Number:

314840

Application Type:

Project Period:

2021 - 2026

Partner countries:

Criminal insanity concerns the lack of capacity for responsible action, which is crucial for decisions about punishment. In most countries, the application of this doctrine depends on the teachings of psychiatry and on diagnostic categorisations, often connected to the state of psychosis. Accounts of criminal insanity are at the same time contingent on culture. The legal concept of insanity is thus located in the intersection between national legislation, international philosophical discussions, and medical research about serious mental illnesses. To secure a knowledge-based legal understanding of psychosis and criminal insanity is urgent. Despite its worldwide significance, the legal understanding of psychosis is unclear and contested. This lack of clarity produces stigma, unequal treatment and defies the rule of law. DIMENSIONS studies criminal insanity and how this legal doctrine is related to mental illnesses, particularly psychosis. By fusing philosophy, legal research, and mental health research, DIMENSIONS seeks to develop the legal understanding of psychosis and how it is related to criminal insanity. The project is carried out by an international research team with members from Norway (Bergen and Oslo), Sweden and the U.S., with collaborators and advisors from the Netherlands, U.K. and Australia. With the Norwegian medical model as a legal basis, the project challenges current insanity paradigms. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder and essentially with psychosis, without any requirement that this condition influenced the crime. In a project publication from 2022 we claim that this model carries specific opportunities to explore the interrelations between philosophical, legal, and medical premises involved in the problem. In a publication from 2023, we explored the prospect of a common approach to mentally ill offenders in Europe, through a comparative discussion of the criminal insanity rules and systems in Norway and Bulgaria. Ultimately DIMENSIONS targets a unified insanity model that is valid across involved disciplines and that opens research paths beyond current insanity models.

The key legal doctrine of criminal insanity concerns the lack of capacity for responsible action and provides an exemption from criminal responsibility in most countries. Its application depends today on the teachings of psychiatry and on diagnostic categorisations. Psychosis is central to the western idea of criminal incapacity, but its legal relevance is unclear and contested. Rules and judgements rely on underdeveloped and invalid assumptions of mental disorders. This produces unequal treatment, stigma and defies the rule of law. Legal research has not yet provided a proper clarification. It is urgent that legal research carries out empirical studies, revisits current insanity models, and utilises insights by other disciplines, philosophy and mental health research in particular. Through a novel multidimensional approach, DIMENSIONS fuses philosophy, legal research, and mental health research, and sets out to explore the medical model used in Norwegian law to create new knowledge and understanding of criminal insanity and psychosis. Norway is rare in the world to use a medical model that identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and essentially with psychosis. This model has not been sufficiently explored and may provide paradigm shifting insights of the premises involved in the insanity doctrine. DIMENSIONS will combine a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the medical model with the first multilayered empirical study of legal argumentation about insanity and psychosis and is pioneering in using recent dimensional and transdiagnostic mental health insights to advance the legal understanding of psychosis. DIMENSIONS has a solid interdisciplinary research team, and is supported by a dedicated advisory committee of world leading scholars to ensure high academic quality and impact. Ultimately DIMENSIONS targets a unified insanity model that is valid across the involved disciplines and that opens new research paths beyond current insanity models.

Publications from Cristin

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Funding scheme:

SAMKUL-Samfunnsutviklingens kulturell