[This article examines the evidential and procedural aspects of claims based on mental incapacity in English courtrooms in the ‘long’ 18 century. It employs a frame the author has termed ‘manifest madness’ to analyse how such claims were articulated and elaborated at trial in this period. This analysis reveals, first, the substantive significance of the accused’s conduct; second, the part playe...

The wrongs targeted by the criminal law need not reside in a defendant’s conduct and its effects (actus reus) or even in her willingness to allow or risk that conduct and its effects (mens rea as to actus reus). Rather, to a greater or lesser extent, wrongs may also reside in a species of mens rea that does not relate to the actus reus of an offence at all, but is rather ulterior to (goes beyon...

Consent to sex matters because it can transform coitus from being among the most heinous of criminal offenses into sex that is of no concern at all to the criminal law. Unfortunately, the normative task of making the law of rape more just is commonly impaired by conceptual confusion about what “consent” means. Consent is both a single concept in law and a multitude of opposing and crosscutting ...

Researchers studying human behavioral genetics have made significant scientific progress in enhancing our understanding of the relative contributions of genetics and the environment in observed variations in human behavior. Quickly outpacing the advances in the science are its applications in the criminal justice system. Already, human behavioral genetics research has been introduced in the U.S...

Background: Previous research suggests that those who enter prison with a low level of criminal attitudes, tend to acquire more deviant attitudes during their sentence due to persistent contact with criminal others, and moreover, presence of criminal personality may be sufficient to develop criminal attitudes. Aim: To determine which of the independent variables: age, education level, marital s...

Probation is a well-established part of our criminal justice toolkit, but we know surprisingly little about the circumstances under which it is effective. Attempts to increase supervision intensity for crimeand cost-saving purposes have yielded mixed results at best. This dissertation examines the theory and scientific evidence on the effectiveness of probation, and the impact of changing the i...

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This study compared defendants charged with Criminal Sexual Conduct whose victims were <6 years of age with defendants whose victims were 12 or more years of age. The study included 163 men referred to the evaluation unit of a state center for forensic psychiatry. Thirty-eight men had younger victims (YVs) and 125 men had older victims (OVs). The variables of comparison were defendant demograph...

OBJECTIVE Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at heightened risk for maltreatment in childhood and criminality as they enter into adolescence and early adulthood. Here, we investigated the effect of moderate to severe childhood maltreatment on later criminality among adolescents/young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood while accounting for the contributions of...