Understanding Psychopathy and Personality Disorders in Criminal Law
Liability for the TP
Liability for the Treatment Plan (TP) is complex and must be individualized. Conviction is often inappropriate for psychopaths, as they are not intimidated by typical deterrents like prison, often thriving among similar individuals, thus increasing their future criminal potential and indiscipline. They are irresponsible and pose a greater danger, openly intending to re-offend. Criminal attribution in psychopaths should only be diminished in exceptional cases where there’s a demonstrable decrease in conscious willingness to act. In such cases, sentences might be reduced or suspended, prioritizing treatment for personality disorders. For prevention, psychopathy should be considered relevant for attribution. The antisocial personality or moral insanity is a set of mental abnormalities of moral and constitutional origin, beyond any intellectual weakness, making the subject maladapted to social norms. These individuals know right from wrong but lack compassion, sympathy, shame, loyalty, or respect. They lack self-worth and are incapable of remorse. This perversion starts early in childhood, continuing throughout their lives, often on the fringes of society, with prison and mental institutions as common residences, punctuated by brief periods of freedom used to commit new crimes. The difference between these individuals and common criminals is the morally insane nature of their actions. They don’t necessarily seek immediate benefits from their offenses. This is especially prevalent in dissocial, defiant, or perverse psychopaths. Dissocial psychopaths have three positive and three negative traits distinguishing them from psychotic offenders:
1. Positives:
- a. Inability to adjust socially, despite having the means, due to an internal characterological factor.
- b. Lack of sufficient motivation for normal behavior.
- c. Generally average intelligence.
2. Negatives:
- a. The degree of moral perversion is permanent, not incidental.
- b. Moral perversion is not justified by environmental factors.
- c. No reduction in accountability is accepted unless accompanied by intellectual or volitional deficits or if it’s a symptom of an active psychotic process.
In cases of personality disorders with instinctive, affective, and volitional deviations, but with intact intellect, where the individual understands their actions and consequences and can inhibit criminal tendencies when the risk is high, accountability is not affected. They should be held responsible, leading to security measures, indefinite detention, and rehabilitation, as social reintegration is difficult.
Item 13. Clinical Types of Personality Disorders
1. Paranoid Personality: A pervasive and unjustified tendency to interpret others’ actions as deliberately aggressive or threatening. They are distrustful, suspicious, and sensitive, often exhibiting psychological rigidity, which can develop into paranoia.
2. Schizoid Personality: Characterized by indifference to others, limited emotional expression, emotional coldness, a preference for fantasy, solitude, introspection, and reserve, leading to a lack of close friends.
3. Conduct Personality: From childhood, these individuals lack responsibility and disregard social rules. In adulthood, this continues with aggressiveness, irritability, job instability, sexual promiscuity, lack of responsibility towards future dependents, and a lack of guilt. Many offenders fall into this category.
4. Impulsive Personality: An impulse control disorder where behavior is unpredictable. Individuals may swing between violent anger and affection.
5. Histrionic Personality: A need for attention above all else. They are suggestible, hyper-emotional, with exaggerated expressions, superficial and changeable affection. They are self-centered, manipulative, seductive, exhibitionistic, and often frivolous. Histrionic personality is often linked to neurosis.
6. Anankastic Personality (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder): A continuous trend of doubting and questioning everything, combined with perfectionism, attention to detail, a desire to repeatedly check everything, and a scrupulous conscience. This can lead to pedantry, rigidity, obstinacy, and routine behaviors.
7. Anxious (Avoidant) Personality: Characterized by shyness, introversion, inhibition, and anxiety in social situations due to fear of negative evaluation, feelings of insecurity and inferiority, low self-esteem, hypersensitivity to criticism, and a tendency towards a solitary life.
8. Dependent Personality: Individuals are incapable of making decisions independently and continuously rely on others. They exhibit passivity and passive-aggressiveness. Their relationships are characterized by requests and demands for affection and support, which can become aggressive.
Item 14. TP Criminal Reactions
The medico-legal importance of personality disorders lies in the individual’s inability to adapt to common environmental conditions and social life. They cannot maintain stable employment. Psychopathy persists throughout life, leading to predictable criminal situations. Psychopaths are recidivists, committing multiple and repeated offenses, often developing new and intelligent forms of crime. They skillfully feign mental deficits. They rarely commit violent crimes, and when they do, it’s coolly and deliberately, aiming to ensure impunity. Their crimes can be brutal and cruel. While anankastic, asthenic, anxious, and depressive personalities pose little danger, paranoid, dissocial, or heartless psychopaths are highly dangerous. Psychopaths’ participation in property crimes is often limited. Their most common sexual crime is exhibitionism.