Philosophical Issues in Crime & Mental Illness

Conference Co-Chairs:

Christian Perring, Ph.D. Dowling College

Peter Zachar, Ph.D. Auburn University Montgomery

John Z Sadler, M.D. UT Southwestern Medical Center

For better or for worse, crime, criminality, and mental illness have been connected in Western societies in spite of the Enlightenment effort to parse out different kinds of social deviance For the 25th Anniversary meeting of AAPP, our theme focuses on the complex relationship between the concepts of “criminal vice” and “mental disorder.” The relationships between criminality and mental disorder can be organized around 10 themes: (1) mental disorder as a criminal excuse or compromise in criminal/moral responsibility; (2) the “mad versus bad” problem – whether some mental disorders such as psychopathy are moral failings that are being labeled diseases as well as the converse – whether criminality is a disease; (3) the proper role of mental health care in criminal justice settings – adult and juvenile; (4) the differing conceptual and epistemological standpoints of law and psychiatry (for example the nature of evidence in jury trials versus experiments); (5) conceptual and ethical issues in forensic psychiatry and psychology – questions ranging from whose interests does the practitioner serve, to capacity to stand trial or be executed, to duties to warn; (6) the ethics of psychiatric research with criminal offenders; (7) issues of consent and voluntarism in psychiatric treatment of criminal offenders (8) particular issues concerning the social control of deviance, such as sexual predator laws, the role of punishment, rehabilitation, containment, and deterrence in penal approaches, and as well as care of the mentally ill in penal systems; (9) issues around the doctor-patient relationship in working with mentally ill offenders in inpatient and outpatient settings; and (10) miscellaneous issues including conceptual issues in criminal profiling, the concepts of victim and victimization, the use of the DSM in forensic settings, and the issue of forgiveness of offenders in mental health settings. Abstracts may address one or more of these aspects.

Full Presentations will be strictly limited to 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.

A Poster Session is offered for a limited number of abstracts in additional to Full Presentations. Abstracts will be blindly reviewed, so the author's identifying information should be attached in a coversheet separate from the abstract text, giving names, degrees, academic affiliations, and e-mail addresses of authors and co-authors

Abstracts should be 500-600 words and should be sent via email by October 15, 2012 to both Christian Perring ([email protected]) and Peter Zachar ([email protected]). Notices of acceptance or rejection will be distributed in December.