In 2005 the Italian Supreme Court held that also persons suffering from “severe personality disorders” may enter a plea of non-responsibility if, at the time of an alleged crime, they were under such severe stress that they decompensated into a mental state during which they were unable to appreciate the nature, quality and consequences of their behavior or to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law. Since then, offenders with personality disorders have become a challenge for the Italian forensic psychiatric system, because criminal offenders have a high rate of personality disorders and the identification of the “severe” threshold is particularly hard in a jurisdiction which includes the volitional prong. The aim of this study is to determine how personality disorders are viewed in relation to criminal responsibility within the Italian criminal system, discussing the results in the light of the evidences from the international literature. We conducted a retrospective study of sentences of the Italian Supreme Court from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2010, collected via a judicial database and we reviewed the articles published in English from 2000 to 2010 with the keywords “personality disorder”, “criminal responsibility”, “insanity defense”, “volitional/cognitive capacities”. The results of the sentences study indicate that personality disorders have become very frequent in Italian insanity defense cases. The most frequently occurring are antisocial, borderline and non otherwise specified. The majority of these were associated with another Axis I disorder, in particular with substance abuse. According to the literature, the proof of a “mental disease” is necessary, but not sufficient, to establish an “insanity defense”, because from a forensic psychiatric standpoint the necessary conditions whereby a mental disorder can take on the meaning of “insanity” should be that it has caused, in the specific case, such “psychopathological functioning” of the acting subject as to compromise his capacity for cognition and/or volition and that it was causally linked with the crime.

Personality disorders and criminal responsibility in Italy: forensic psychiatric considerations about the importance of going beyond a categorical view

ROCCA, GABRIELE;
2012-01-01

Abstract

In 2005 the Italian Supreme Court held that also persons suffering from “severe personality disorders” may enter a plea of non-responsibility if, at the time of an alleged crime, they were under such severe stress that they decompensated into a mental state during which they were unable to appreciate the nature, quality and consequences of their behavior or to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law. Since then, offenders with personality disorders have become a challenge for the Italian forensic psychiatric system, because criminal offenders have a high rate of personality disorders and the identification of the “severe” threshold is particularly hard in a jurisdiction which includes the volitional prong. The aim of this study is to determine how personality disorders are viewed in relation to criminal responsibility within the Italian criminal system, discussing the results in the light of the evidences from the international literature. We conducted a retrospective study of sentences of the Italian Supreme Court from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2010, collected via a judicial database and we reviewed the articles published in English from 2000 to 2010 with the keywords “personality disorder”, “criminal responsibility”, “insanity defense”, “volitional/cognitive capacities”. The results of the sentences study indicate that personality disorders have become very frequent in Italian insanity defense cases. The most frequently occurring are antisocial, borderline and non otherwise specified. The majority of these were associated with another Axis I disorder, in particular with substance abuse. According to the literature, the proof of a “mental disease” is necessary, but not sufficient, to establish an “insanity defense”, because from a forensic psychiatric standpoint the necessary conditions whereby a mental disorder can take on the meaning of “insanity” should be that it has caused, in the specific case, such “psychopathological functioning” of the acting subject as to compromise his capacity for cognition and/or volition and that it was causally linked with the crime.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11567/324850
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