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The Treatment of Mental Disorders and Mental Deficiency in Continental Criminal Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Hermann Mannheim
Hermann Mannheim*
Affiliation:
Of the London School of Economics; formerly Judge of the Court of Appeal in Berlin and Professor of Criminal Law at Berlin University
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Extract

In availing myself of the invitation kindly extended to me by the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency of speaking to you on “The Treatment of Mental Disorders and Mental Deficiency in Continental Criminal Law “, I have no intention to abuse this privilege by criticizing the corresponding English law or by making suggestions for its improvement. For the latter task I feel myself neither competent nor authorized, as I am only too well aware that every important legal change is dependent upon many considerations which the foreign observer—though possibly conversant with the external facts—can appreciate only inadequately. What I may safely do, however, is to summarize some outstanding features of modern continental law and to add a few personal experiences concerning the legal system under which I worked for nearly a quarter of a century. I intend to deal first with problems of insanity (including temporary insanity caused by drunkenness), secondly with other forms of mental disorders and with mental deficiency.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 84 , Issue 350-351 , May 1938 , pp. 524 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1938 

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References

∗ Read before the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency.Google Scholar

† See, e.g., the latest account given in 34 Michigan Law Review 569 (1936).Google Scholar

∗ Insanity and Crime, 1864, p. 39.Google Scholar

† See Frank R., Kommentar zum Strafgess et zbuch, fn. 3 ad §51.Google Scholar

‡ Oppenheimer H., The Criminal Responsibility cf Lunatics, 1909, p. 156.Google Scholar

§ See Bumke, Lehrbuch der Geisteskrankheiten (2nd ed., 1924), pp. 364–5.Google Scholar

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† See Lobe in Kommentar der Reichsgerichtsräte zum Strafgesetzbuch, fn. 2 ad §51.Google Scholar

‡ Sullivan W. C., Crime and Insanity, 1924, p. 230.Google Scholar

§ Reichsgerichtsentscheidungen in Strafsachen (Official Collection of the Judgments of the Supreme Court in Criminal Cases), lxiii, p. 48 (author's translation).Google Scholar

∗ As to this Act, see the author's essay in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, xxvi, pp. 517 et seq.Google Scholar

† See, e.g., the decision of the Supreme Court of January 29, 1935, lxix, p. 112.Google Scholar

‡ Official English translation.Google Scholar

§ See, e.g., Garraud, Precis de criminel droit, pp. 666 et seq.; Vidal and Magnol, Cours de droit criminel (7th ed., 1928), p. 309.Google Scholar

‖ Art. 62, Nos. 1-3.Google Scholar

∗ Garraud, op. cit., pp. 690 et seq.; the opposite view seems to be supported by Vidal and Magnol, p. 289.Google Scholar

† See, e.g., Verger Henry, L'Evolution des idées médicales sur la r'sponsabilit' des délinquants, 1923, pp. 15, 89; Garraud, op. cit., pp. 622, 625-6; and, on the other hand, Humphreys, Cambridge Law Journal, i, p. 312.Google Scholar

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§ Art. 122 of the Avant-projet runs : “ Est exempt de peine le prévenu qui était en état de démence au temps de l'action". Professor Donnedieu de Vabres, however, recommends a provision similar to the present German law (see his remarks in La Giustizia Penale, 1933, Part II, pp. 3 et seq.).Google Scholar

‖ See now the interesting case Sodeman v. King (The Times Law Report, May, 28, 1936).Google Scholar

See Garraud, op. cit., p. 608; Roux, Droit criminel (2nd ed., 1927), i, p. 170. ∗∗ See Oppenheimer, op. cit., p. 250.Google Scholar

‡ Vol. xxi, p. 131. As to the Swedish practice see Kinberg, Basic Principles of Criminology, pp. 346, 368.Google Scholar

∗ See Weihofen Henry, Insanity as a Defence in Criminal Law, 1933, pp. 148 et seq.; Glueck Sheldon, Mental Disorders and the Criminal Law, 1925, pp. 41 et seq.Google Scholar

† See as to the former German law the author's remarks, op. cit., p. 518; as to French law Garraud R., op. cit., p. 617, esp. fn. 11.Google Scholar

‡ American courts have sometimes maintained that the acceptance of the irresistible impulse test would mean the end of civilization, although this defence is actually accepted in a small minority of American states (see Michigan Law Review 34, p. 569).Google Scholar

∗ See, e.g., §§ 42b and 42f of the German Act of November 24, 1933; art. 222 of the Italian, §§ 11 and 24 of the Russian, art. 60 of the Polish, §53 of the Yugoslav Penal Code, the Swedish Abnormal Delinquents Act of 1928, the Belgian Act of April 9, 1930, art. 72 of the French Avant-projet of 1932.Google Scholar

† In England, it is not lawful for magistrates to refrain from committing an accused for trial on the ground that the evidence has sufficiently proved his insanity (Halsbury, Laws of England, ix, p. 20, fn. 10; Stone, Manual, 68th ed., 1936, p. 182). In German and French law, however, such a course is not unusual.Google Scholar

‡ See Report, p. 25.Google Scholar

§ Kelchner Mathilde, Schuld und Sühne im Urteil jugendlicher Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen, 1932, Beiheft 63 zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie.Google Scholar

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‖ See, e.g., the description of the Kürten case by Wagner Margaret Seaton, The Monster of Düsseldorf, pp. 191 et seq.Google Scholar

∗ This is the German form of probation; the English system of placing on probation without conviction and sentence is not accepted in German Law.Google Scholar

† See Vidal and Magnol, op cit., p. 301; Garraud, p. 660; Roux, Cours de droit criminel, (2nd ed., 1927), i, p. 170.Google Scholar

‡ Official English translation.Google Scholar

§ See the author's remarks in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, xxvi, pp. 528–9.Google Scholar

∗ See East, Forensic Psychiatry, p. 251.Google Scholar

∗ See Das kommende deutsche Strafrecht, Allgemeiner Teil, 1934, pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

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‖ Das kommende deutsche Strafrecht, Allgemeiner Teil, 1934, pp. 41, 45.Google Scholar

Die sogenannte verminderte Zurechnungsfähigkeit, 1927, pp. 32 et seq.Google Scholar

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∗ See the new §42b of the Penal Code and the new §456b of the Code of Criminal Procedure.Google Scholar

∗ The Draft of the Commission (p. 44), in contradistinction to the Act of 1933, does not explicitly mention the “Geistesschwäche”, but the Report says (p. 39) that this conception is covered by the term “krankhafte Störung der Geistestätigkeit” (morbid disturbance of mental activity).Google Scholar

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‡ In England also; see the Report of the Prison Commissioners for England and Wales, 1925-26, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

∗ See the author's remarks, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. xxvi, pp. 519 et seq.Google Scholar

† The majority of French criminologists are not at all satisfied with the bare system of mitigating the sentence (see, e.g., Vidal-Magnol, op. cit., pp. 304–5; Garraud, op. cit., pp. 632 et seq.; Verger, op. cit., p. 209).Google Scholar

‡ See the criticism by two Belgian experts, Charles Didion and Maurice Poll in the Recueil de documents en matière penale et pénitentiaire, 1931, i, p. 18.Google Scholar

§ Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, xxiv, p. 202.Google Scholar

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