IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/ajinst/v6y2017i3p17-23n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Insanity and Social Dangerousness: Philosophical Reflections on Italian Law

Author

Listed:
  • Ugolini Beatrice

    (Expert Judge of the Surveillance Court in Bologna, Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

According to Italian law 81/2014, social dangerousness derived only from individual personal characteristics, including mental health conditions. As a result, dangerousness is not perceived as related to a specific context, but on the contrary mainly caused by a psychic condition. Although forensic psychiatry and criminology have denied this axiom for a long time now, this ancient and traditional prejudice where a mentally ill person is dangerous as such, seems to have returned formally. Beyond the contingent issues that may have influenced Italian lawmakers in formulating this legislation, there is a question to ask: why does this union between mental illness/social dangerousness reappears in a cyclic and persistent way? Since imputability and social dangerousness are not topics studied exclusively by law and psychiatry, it is possible to express some philosophical considerations regarding the correlation between insanity and deviance and the ancient bond between insanity and evil. In assessing psychiatric social dangerousness, in order to reconcile instances of the rights of individual patients with the need to protect society, the law needs to take into account these hidden and intertwined issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Ugolini Beatrice, 2017. "Insanity and Social Dangerousness: Philosophical Reflections on Italian Law," Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Sciendo, vol. 6(3), pages 17-23, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:vrs:ajinst:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:17-23:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/ajis-2017-0017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/ajis-2017-0017
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/ajis-2017-0017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vrs:ajinst:v:6:y:2017:i:3:p:17-23:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.