The prevalence of intellectual disability (ID) in offender services is higher than in the general population. Identifying offenders with ID in the criminal justice system can be a challenge. It is essential to recognise offenders who may have ID and assess them. Screening offenders for ID is potentially less time consuming and effective in identifying those who would benefit from full assessment. Screening tools such as the LDSQ and HASI have been developed in community and in forensic settings, which have good sensitivity and specificity. Screening for adaptive functioning skills is important when considering the presence of ID that may be difficult to elucidate in a forensic setting. The treatment of offenders with ID requires commitment from staff to support people through levels of security. Adapting treatment strategies is key to treating people. Treatment programmes for offences such as sex offences, fire setting and violence can be adapted successfully to work with people with cognitive impairments. Alternatives to custodial and hospital care are developing where people are diverted from prison to hospital or to appropriate community support.

This chapter provides an overview of the practice, research, legislation and services models across the four Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland. There are marked differences in approaches to offenders with neurodevelopmental disorders across the Nordic countries. Most countries have defined thresholds around the functioning of the person in considering a person criminally irresponsible. Still, the approach to identification, care and treatment of offenders with these conditions within the criminal law remains unclear. Treatment facilities reflect the legislation and policy of the country with for example an inclusive perspective as in Sweden which provides no separate treatment facilities for offenders with intellectual disability (ID) or neurodevelopmental disorders. However, Norway and Denmark have taken a different approach and developed special care and treatment units for people with neurodevelopmental disorders who commit offences.

Ought ageing people sometimes to be prepared to forgive old offences that it would not have been (so) appropriate for them to have forgiven at an earlier date? The question is tackled in the framework of a narrative conception of human life that focuses attention on the changing impact of offences on victims as they advance through their life-stories. While concerns can be raised regarding the intelligibility or point of forgiveness of long-past offences given the changes that occur to people (both victims and offenders) over time, it is argued that forgiveness has a valuable role to play in tying up the moral loose ends in a life-narrative. Finally, the question is asked whether an offender may forgive herself for an offence committed against someone who is now deceased. It is proposed that although this would be out of order, an offender may legitimately forgive herself for the harm she has done to herself through her wrongdoing.

In conjunction with situational and circumstantial factors, personality is a common influence contributing to the tipping point at which an offence occurs. People without these traits in similar circumstances are better able to eschew risky situations. The ultimate cause of ostensibly antagonistic traits is in evolved behavioural mechanisms which continue to be useful in harsher socioecological niches. Antagonistic traits often function alongside more positive co-operative and empathic traits, both having contributed to human survival over millennia. A huge body of psychometric and multivariate work with offenders involving large samples and longitudinal samples indicates five-factor, HEXACO, Dark Triad and other trait description schemes corroborate one-another regarding the key trait influences on offending. These models map onto DSM and ICD-10 personality disorder models, suggesting personality disorders have a foundation in trait dispositions. Work is needed to identify better behavioural measures of these dispositions, and how they integrate into cognitive and desistance processes.

Chapter 7 reflects on the scope of the right to access justice in the CRPD, taking into account the jurisprudence of the CRPD Committee. Firstly, it examines the right to access justice in international human rights law, before turning its attention to the barriers that people with disabilities face when they interact with the justice system on the whole. Then, the chapter discusses the scope and normative content of Article 13 CRPD and examines the role that other CRPD provisions play in ensuring equal access to the judicial system and protection from inhuman treatment in the event of a conviction. The chapter finally addresses the challenges associated with the participation of people with disabilities, either as victims or offenders, in the criminal justice system.

Chapter 7 reflects on the scope of the right to access justice in the CRPD, taking into account the jurisprudence of the CRPD Committee. Firstly, it examines the right to access justice in international human rights law, before turning its attention to the barriers that people with disabilities face when they interact with the justice system on the whole. Then, the chapter discusses the scope and normative content of Article 13 CRPD and examines the role that other CRPD provisions play in ensuring equal access to the judicial system and protection from inhuman treatment in the event of a conviction. The chapter finally addresses the challenges associated with the participation of people with disabilities, either as victims or offenders, in the criminal justice system.

This chapter is based on descriptions of three mentally disordered offenders. The first had a history of severe traumatization and the second suffered from a psychotic illness. They were both sent to prison and both committed suicide. The third suffered from Asperger syndrome and was sent to a secure psychiatric facility. I argue that the two deaths arose from a prescientific, retributive response to crime that was wholly inappropriate in these individuals. In the case of the trauma victim, the system responded by inflicting further trauma on her. The tragic outcome in the psychotic offender arose from the application of a legal definition of insanity that does not allow for complex clinical realities. I conclude that these cases point to a need to move from a retributive response to crime to one based on achieving the best outcomes for victims, offenders, and society. Legal concepts and definitions of insanity should be dropped. Instead, we should adopt an approach that is therapeutic rather than punitive in all cases where mental disorder has been a necessary causal factor in the commission of the offence.

The two instruments the state uses to maintain order are the corrective and the preventive. Those who reject the notion of moral responsibility either prefer to abandon punishment in favor of preventive techniques or seek to justify (nonretributive) punishment. Although I think punishment is essentially retributive and cannot be justified, I also think we must, if possible, avoid yielding to the preventive worldview. We must distinguish the lengths to which we are willing to go with incompetent or irrational individuals who are dangerous from the lengths to which we are willing to go with rational and competent offenders. My view is that borrowing from punishment its harsh methods we maintain the dignity of competent offenders when we subject them to these methods with the aim of leading them to abandon the defective motivational traits that resulted in the crime. I call this approach correction rather than punishment, because it lacks the retributive element that makes punishment punishment. Here I suggest how this view might be defended if we start, as Fichte does, from the assumption that those who violate any law deserve to be made outlaws; in current terminology, to be subjected to preventive detention and preventive techniques generally.