Predators and punishment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12434823 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Steven K Erickson (0000-0001-9424-3932, corresponding author), Michael J Vitacco (0000-0003-2371-4703, Mendota Mental Health Institute) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Publication date | 2011-07-25 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychology Public Policy and Law (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1076-8971 • E-ISSN: 1939-1528 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1037/a0024607 |
| OpenAlex | W2012058259 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
Psychopathy is characterized as an emotional disorder tightly woven with persistent antisocial behavior. Prevailing legal doctrine and social norms hold psychopaths responsible for their conduct and punishment legitimately flows to psychopaths who violate the law. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged that view by claiming the emotional and cognitive deficits inherent in psychopathy should preclude culpability for some psychopaths. This view necessarily imposes a substantial modification on how the law conceptualizes culpability that is ultimately unwise. Legal responsibility entails the capacity for rationality and psychopaths comport with the established meanings of rationality as understood by the law and the communal intuitions which guide it. Extant scholarship indicates psychopaths are rationale agents and can be fairly subjected to punishment for conduct which violates the law. The law should reject efforts to include psychopaths within its excuse jurisprudence
Criminal law · Criminology · Culpability · Doctrine · Excuse · Extant taxon · Jurisprudence · Law and economics · Personality · Political science · Psychopathy · Punishment (psychology · Rationality · Scholarship · Sociology · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Law · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Social Psychology · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
| Highly cited | No |
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