Psychiatric commitment under the criminal law in China: An empirical perspective.

This article examines the legislation and practice of compulsory treatment in China. Part I traces the Chinese history of criminal commitment law, explains the research methodology, and highlights some general empirical findings. Part II provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of compulsory treatment law in China, it covers both substantial issues such as criteria of compulsory treatment and procedural issues such as the commitment hearing, enforcement, and discharge of compulsory treatment. It also explores the compulsory treatment law from the human rights protection perspective. Our primary objective is to present the empirical findings to enable the legislative and other involved government agencies to make informed decisions about the future evolution of Chinese law in this area.

El caso del escritor Pedro Castera: entre la esfera pública, el campo literario y la experiencia manicomial en el México de finales del siglo XIX / The case of the writer Pedro Castera: between the public sphere, the literary field and the mental hospital experience in Mexico at the end of the XIX Century

En el verano de 1883, el escritor, minero, científico y seguidor del espiritismo Pedro Castera (1846-1906) fue recluido en el Hospital de San Hipólito para hombres dementes de la Ciudad de México. El confinamiento y la situación de aislamiento del también poeta despertó acalorados debates y disputas sobre su condición mental. Los motivos de su internamiento y las conjeturas acerca de la psicopatología que lo aquejaba fueron cruciales dentro de la narrativa de este caso, en el que convergieron intrigas políticas, sospechas familiares, controversias médicas y convenciones literarias. El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar las valoraciones médicas alrededor de la reclusión, permanencia y salida de Pedro Castera del nosocomio, con el fin de reflexionar, asimismo, en torno a la resignificación de la figura del loco-literario, a partir de la emergencia del discurso de la medicina mental en el contexto de la modernidad mexicana en el último tercio del siglo XIX

In the summer of 1883, the writer, miner, scientist and follower of spiritism Pedro Castera (1846-1906) was detained at the Hospital de San Hipólito for demented men in Mexico City. The confinement and isolation of the also poet aroused heated debates and disputes surrounding his mental condition. The reasons for his internment and the conjectures about the psychopathology that afflicted him were crucial within the narrative of a case in which political intrigues, family suspicions, medical controversies and literary conventions converged. The aim of the present work is to analyze the medical valuations around the confinement, permanence and exit of Pedro Castera in and from the hospital, as well as to reflect on the resignification of the figure of the literary-madman from the emergence of the discourse of mental medicine in the context of Porfirian modernity

Public Perceptions of Moral Insanity in the 19th Century.

The diagnosis of moral insanity was primarily used through the best part of the 19th century to define and justify the psychiatric treatment of a particular type of conduct in which the patient seemed otherwise rational but displayed certain inexplicable and undesirable behaviors deemed socially perverse or "unfit." This article traces the history of this highly contested concept, which mirrors a historical arc in which psychiatry emerges as a discipline and stakes territorial claims on defining and regulating moral behavior. As illustration, I focus on the Hinchman Conspiracy Trial of 1849 as a less known case of wrongful confinement that hinged on proving the diagnosis of moral insanity in court. Moral insanity is a case study of the efforts to medicalize human ethical conduct, an effort starkly resisted by both the courts and the public. Some of the legacies of the term are the contemporary use of insanity as a legal defense, and the ability of patients to dispute psychiatric ward confinement orders in court.

The professionalization of psychologists as court personnel: Consequences of the first institutional commitment law for the "feebleminded".

The first law providing for the permanent, involuntary institutionalization of "feeble-minded" individuals was passed in Illinois in 1915. This bill represented the first eugenic commitment law in the United States. Focusing on the consequences of this 1915 commitment law within the context of intelligence testing, eugenics, and the progressive movement, this paper will argue that the then newly devised Binet-Simon intelligence test facilitated the definition and classification of feeble-mindedness that validated feeble-mindedness theory, enabled the state to legitimize the eugenic diagnosis and institutionalization of feeble-minded individuals, and especially empowered psychologists to carve out a niche for themselves in the courtroom as "experts" when testifying as to the feeble-mindedness of individuals.

Through a glass darkly: patients of the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane at Jacksonville, USA (1854-80).

The State Hospital for the Insane at Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois, was the first public hospital of its kind to be established in the state and among the earliest to be built on the 'Kirkbride Plan'. It opened for patients in 1851. We describe the background to the establishment of the hospital and, so far as is possible from publicly available sources, its catchment area, the nature of the patients held there up to 1880, its mechanisms of discharge, and supposed causes of death. We end with a plea that after over 150 years, the release of hospital casebooks and similar records in digital form would be of considerable benefit to historians of psychology, scientific biographers, genealogists and demographers.

Lessons from the past: Family involvement in patient admission and discharge, Beechworth Lunatic Asylum, 1900-1912.

In this study, document analysis is used to examine case books from the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum with the aim of determining the extent of family involvement in patients' admission and discharge. There were 420 male and 278 female patients admitted in the study period, with over half transferred from other Victorian asylums. Next of kin were identified for 64% of male and 84% of female patients. Families were involved in the admission of 52 (12%) male and 50 (18%) female patients, usually by bringing patients to the asylum or providing evidence of behavioural changes. Approximately 25% of patients were discharged (101 men and 62 women) and of these, families were involved in discharge for 26% of male and 71% of female patients, mainly by taking responsibility for them during trial discharge. Occasionally families refused to do this, or sought to have patients detained because of fears of violence. The relevance of the study to contemporary practice is explored, particularly the need for dialogue between clinicians and families who identify behavioural changes in family members, appropriate support for family carers, and timely provision of community care following discharge from inpatient facilities.

Pacientes «penales» en instituciones psiquiátricas: cien años del Manicomio Nacional de Leganés (1852-1952) / «Penal» patients in psychiatric institutions: a hundred years of the National Asylum of Leganés (1852-1952)

A pesar de que, desde el siglo XVIII, surgieron en Europa las críticas y los debates sobre la convivencia de enfermos mentales y delincuentes sanos, a lo largo del siglo XIX no se crearon instituciones específicas en España. En el Manicomio Nacional de Leganés ingresaron pacientes dementes procesados desde su inauguración en 1852, la mayoría de ellos, tras la publicación del Real Decreto de 15 de mayo de 1885. El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar la población «penada o procesada» hospitalizada en esta institución de carácter estatal, durante los primeros cien años del establecimiento. Se han revisado las historias clínicas de todos los sujetos con causas penales ingresados entre 1852 y 1952, realizando un análisis de variables sociodemográficas y clínico-terapéuticas con el paquete estadístico SPSS v21, además de estudiar cuestiones de carácter administrativo-judicial. Se observa que durante el primer siglo de existencia del Manicomio fueron internados poco más de un centenar de enfermos con causas pendientes (3,6% del total de pacientes), casi la mitad entre 1886 y 1896, generando problemas organizativos y económicos en el hospital (AU)

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'Insane criminals' and the 'criminally insane': criminal asylums in Norway, 1895-1940.

This article looks into the establishment and development of two criminal asylums in Norway. Influenced by international psychiatry and a European reorientation of penal law, the country chose to institutionalize insane criminals and criminally insane in separate asylums. Norway's first criminal asylum was opened in 1895, and a second in 1923, both in Trondheim. Both asylums quickly filled up with patients who often stayed for many years, and some for their entire lives. The official aim of these asylums was to confine and treat dangerous and disruptive lunatics. Goffman postulates that total institutions typically fall short of their official aims. This study examines records of the patients who were admitted to the two Trondheim asylums, in order to see if the official aims were achieved.

[The long road for psychiatric care in prisons]. / La longue marche des soins psychiatriques en milieu pénitentiaire.

From the 19th century to the present day, the history of psychiatry in prisons has evolved considerably. In parallel with successive laws, codes and articles, psychiatry has gained in structure. From the "medical prison", mental health consultations in every detention centre, the regional medico-psychological services, to today's specially equipped hospital units (UHSA), prisoners receive both preventive care as well as curative treatment.

Madness and crime: Zefinha, the longest confined woman in Brazil.

Living in a forensic hospital for the last 38 years, Josefa da Silva is the longest female inhabitant surviving the penal and psychiatric regime in Brazil. This paper analyses dossier, judicial proceedings, interviews and photographs about her. The psychiatric report is the key component of the medical and penal doubling of criminal insanity. Twelve psychiatric reports illustrate three time frames of the court files: abnormality, danger, and abandonment. The psychiatric authority over confinement has moved from discipline to security, and from disciplinary security to social assistance. In the arrangement between the penal and psychiatric powers, the judge recognizes the medical authority over the truth of insanity. It is the medicine of the reasons for Zefinha's internment that altered over the decades.

“ Eu não sou presa de juízo, não”: Zefinha, a louca perigosa mais antiga do Brasil / Madness and crime: Zefinha, the longest confined woman in Brazil

Resumo Abandonada há 38 anos no manicômio judiciário de Alagoas, Josefa da Silva é a mulher mais antiga sobrevivente do regime penal-psiquiátrico no Brasil. Dossiê, processo judicial, entrevistas e fotografias compõem o corpusde análise deste ensaio. O laudo psiquiátrico é a peça-chave para o dobramento médico-penal na loucura criminosa. Doze laudos psiquiátricos ilustram as três metamorfoses do arquivo judiciário: anormalidade, perigo e abandono. A autoridade psiquiátrica sobre a clausura movimentou-se da disciplina para a segurança, e da segurança disciplinar para a asilar-assistencial. No arranjo entre os poderes penal e psiquiátrico, o juiz reconhece a autoridade médica para a verdade da loucura. É a medicina das razões sobre a clausura de Zefinha que se altera nas décadas de produção do arquivo.

Abstract Living in a forensic hospital for the last 38 years, Josefa da Silva is the longest female inhabitant surviving the penal and psychiatric regime in Brazil. This paper analyses dossier, judicial proceedings, interviews and photographs about her. The psychiatric report is the key component of the medical and penal doubling of criminal insanity. Twelve psychiatric reports illustrate three time frames of the court files: abnormality, danger, and abandonment. The psychiatric authority over confinement has moved from discipline to security, and from disciplinary security to social assistance. In the arrangement between the penal and psychiatric powers, the judge recognizes the medical authority over the truth of insanity. It is the medicine of the reasons for Zefinha’s internment that altered over the decades.

The Moral Career of 'Outmates': Towards a History of Manufactured Mental Disorders in Post-Socialist China.

This study focuses on 'manufactured mentally ill' (bei jingshenbing, [symbol in text]) individuals in post-socialist China. In Chinese society, bei jingshenbing is a neologistic catchphrase that refers to someone who has been misidentified as exhibiting symptoms of mental illness and has been admitted to a mental hospital. Specifically, it refers to those individuals who were subjected to unnecessary psychiatric treatment during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Based on archival analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, this study addresses the ways in which the voices of bei jingshenbing victims and those who support them reveal China's experiences with psychiatric modernity. It also discusses the active role of these individuals in knowledge production, medical policymaking, and the implications for reforming the psychiatric and mental health systems in post-socialist China.

Clara Harrison Town and the origins of the first institutional commitment law for the "feebleminded": psychologists as expert diagnosticians.

The first law providing for the commitment of "feeble-minded" individuals in the United States was passed in 1915, in the state of Illinois. House Bill 655 not only allowed for the permanent, involuntary institutionalization of feeble-minded individuals, but it shifted the commitment and discharge authority from the institution superintendents to the courts. Clara Harrison Town, a student of Lightner Witmer, and the state psychologist at the second largest institution for feeble-minded individuals in the country, was instrumental in this law passing and in ensuring that psychologists, for the first time, be viewed as court "experts" when testifying as to the feeble mindedness of individuals.

Forensic psychiatry and the birth of the criminal insane asylum in modern Italy.

This paper focuses on the creation of the criminal insane asylum in Italy between unification in 1861 and World War I. The establishment of criminal insane asylums was a triumph of the positivist criminology of Cesare Lombroso, who advocated for an institution to intern insane criminals in his classic work, Criminal Man (1876). As a context for the analysis of the birth of the criminal insane asylum in Italy, this essay also outlines the history of the insanity plea in Italian criminal law and the young discipline of psychiatry during the fifty years after Italian unification.

Treatment as punishment: forensic psychiatry in The Netherlands (1870-2005).

This article provides an overview of the development of forensic psychiatry in the Netherlands from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The first part addresses the ways forensic psychiatry established itself in the period 1870-1925 and focuses on its interrelatedness with forensic practice, psychiatry's professionalization, the role of the government, the influence of the so-called New Direction in legal thinking and (Italian and French) anthropology of crime, and the debates among physicians as well as between psychiatrists and legal experts on the proper approach of mentally disturbed offenders. From the mid-1920s on the so-called 'psychopaths laws' anchored forensic psychiatry in the Dutch legal system. The second part zooms in on the enactment of these laws, which formalized special measures for mentally disturbed delinquents. These implied a combination of sentencing and forced admission to and treatment in a mental institution or some other form of psychiatric surveillance. The article deals with the meaning, reach and consequences of this legislation, its debate by psychiatrists and legal experts, the number of delinquents affected, the offenses for which they were sentenced and the (therapeutic) regime in forensic institutions. The goal of the Dutch legislation on psychopaths was ambiguous: if it was designed to protect society against assumed dangerous criminals, at the same time they were supposed to receive psychiatric treatment to enable their return to regular social life again. These legal and medical objectives were at odds with each other and as a result discussions about collective versus individual interests as well as about the usefulness and the effects of this legislation kept flaring up. To this day the history of this legislation is characterized by the intrinsic tension between punishment and security on the one hand and treatment and re-socialization on the other. Whether at some point one or the other prevailed was largely tied to the social climate with respect to law, order and authority.

Psychiatric care or social defense? The origins of a controversy over the responsibility of the mentally ill in French forensic psychiatry.

While some countries like Belgium chose a penal system clearly inspired by social-defense theories for mentally disturbed criminals, the French law hasn't been consistent and varies from the enlightened classical law and social-defense law. Indeed paragraph 1 of article 122-1 states that people whose discernment or control is abolished by a psychiatric disorder are non-responsible respecting the classical logic of law. On the other hand, Paragraph 2 of Article 122-1 allows the mentally ill to be judged responsible whereas no institution exists to take care about them. Then the system of psychiatric care in prisons present as a solution for professionals wishing to promote a system where people are punished and socially rehabilitated. Thus these forensic psychiatrists don't refer to paragraph 1 of article 122-1 and even people presenting serious mental disorders are considered responsible. Moreover, if a controversy has always existed between psychiatrists who argue a large conception of mental irresponsibility and professionals who defend the right to punish and to conclude that responsibility even for mentally disturbed criminals, the controversy becomes more important in French forensic psychiatry after the Second World War. If until the 1970s the practice of imposing responsibility for mentally ill individuals shows itself as a humanism, it occurs more within a security perspective today.

Forensic psychiatric units in Italy from the 1960s to the present.

This article addresses the long-standing continuities in the history of the Italian forensic psychiatric units and views them as the result of conflicting forces, interests, mentalities and strategies at the cross-road of forensic psychiatry, psychiatry, prison and health services. It focuses on the period from the 1960s to the present and deals with, among other issues, the long-term impact of the anti-asylum movements and the on-going debate on the 'phasing out' of the forensic psychiatric units.