Criminal Responsibility from a Clinical Perspective

Abstract

What if the rule-breaking behaviors in which an individual (allegedly) engaged which brought him/her to the attention of law enforcement authorities were something which the individual simply had to do, or not do, and could not resist? In other words, what if the alleged offender could not have chosen to do otherwise? This situation takes us into the realm of what the law calls criminal responsibility, which is the broad subject of this aticle. In the law, the concept of criminal responsibility is an old one. It goes back in formal codified form, as far as we know, to the Code of Hammurabi from ancient Susa in Babylonia, ca. 1792–1750 BCE. This article looks at the types of criminal responsibility used in various jurisdictions, conceptions of diminished capacity, and attempts to discern truth using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technology.