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Assessments of the treatability of forensic patients
Author(s) -
Quinsey Ver L.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
behavioral sciences and the law
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.649
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1099-0798
pISSN - 0735-3936
DOI - 10.1002/bsl.2370060403
Subject(s) - insanity , insanity defense , criminal responsibility , psychology , forensic psychiatry , human factors and ergonomics , poison control , applied psychology , psychiatry , criminology , medical emergency , criminal law , medicine
The treatment of mentally disordered offenders receives very little attention in the literature both by itself and in comparison to other psychological issues such as the insanity defense and the prediction of dangerousness. It is argued that the treatment of mentally disordered offenders should be seen as the more central issue and that the development of an effective technology of change can, in principle, resolve certain problems with the insanity defense and the prediction of dangerousness. From this viewpoint, assessments of treatability should be seen as more practically relevant to dispositional decisions than assessments of criminal responsibility, and improvements in the effectiveness of treatment a better approach to the problem of dangerousness than attempts to improve predictive methods.