The Politics of Psychiatric Evaluation

Towards a Critical Anthropology of Forensic Psychiatry

Bibliographic Data

ID19081936
AuthorsSamuel Lézé (0000-0001-9534-9675, corresponding author)
TranslatorsLucy Garnier
Year2008
Volume5
Publication date2008-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChamp pénal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1777-5272 • E-ISSN: 1777-5272
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/champpenal.8007
OpenAlexW2095374482
LanguageEN
References cited29

In the legal context, psychiatric evaluations are subject to controversy, considered as either indispensable or flawed, and yet rarely studied in their own right. This article puts forward a political anthropology of mental healthcare that is attentive to social context (the problem of recidivism), professional logic (the evaluation of dangerousness) and liminal practices (at the limits of the correctional and the medical). It thus intends to delimit the methodological and theoretical stakes of a study of (i) the psychiatric creation of the expert witness report (ii) its legal use (iii) its consequences on psychiatric care in prison and beyond. What makes reports authoritative or, on the contrary, how are they contested? What are the political issues at stake? Thus, the complexity of the politics of psychiatric evaluations can be drawn out from delineated ethnographic fields; a complexity linked to the situation of these evaluations between, on the one hand, legal and psychiatric theories of personality and, on the other, how they are received and effectively applied by the legal system

Criminology · Expert witness · Forensic psychiatry · Liminality · Political science · Politics · Prison · Psychiatry · Recidivism · Sociology · Witness · Anthropology · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Psychology