Crime

1
Crime

• Defining and Measuring Crime

2
Categorizing Behavior

• Converting the flow of action into categories
• What properties do we use to decide where on
  action type begins and another ends?

B
A
A
Time
3
Properties (Some Possibilities)

• Nature of action
• Amplitude (intensity, force)
• Duration (speed)
• Nature of situation (stimulus, context)
• Presence of instigators
• Emotional stimuli
• Provocations
• Degree of freedom (remember cognitive
  dissonance theory)
• Could have done otherwise
• Reasonable person standard
• Nature of consequences

4
What About Inside Person

• Intention
• Motives
• Mental Illness
• Cognitive Ability
• Knowing right from wrong
• Age related abilities
• Interfering events
• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Brain conditions

5
Causal Mechanisms

• What about the causal processes controlling the
  action
• Are the internal events same as possible causal
  mechanisms
• Are we really just talking about the causes of
  different behaviors
• Do we want to categorize all actions into groups
  according to the causal processes that determine
  them?

6
Legal Views of Definition of Crime

• Any action that violates the law
• Person must know right from wrong
• Does this mean person must know law?
• What is right and wrong?
• Underlying cause of the action (not just its
  form) is critical
• Defeating facts Specific facts that reduce
  culpability

7
Action That Violates the Law

• Good points
• Precision
• No interpretation
• Consistency over people
• Bad points
• What gets included
• How can code describe all actions in enough
  detail when there are so many different ways of
  doing things?

8
Knowledge of Right Wrong(Insanity)

• Concept of responsibility
• Chain of events
• Underlying cause
• Emotional v rational
• Law of Talion (1724)
• McNaughten Rule (1843)
• Psychiatric Expertise
• Durham Decision (1954)
• Model Penal Code Brawner Rule
• GBMI (Guilty, but mentally ill)

9
Law of Talion

• 1st Attempt to codify legal responsibility
• Not criminal if actions like those of Wild Beast

10
McNaughten Rule

• at time of committing act, the accused was
  laboring under such a defect of reason, from
  disease of mind, as to not know nature and
  quality of act or if he did know nature of act,
  he did not know what he was doing was wrong.
• Irresistible impulse added later

11
Role of Mental Disease Expert

• How decide these issues?
• Who better than a person trained in discovering
  mental states of people?
• Problems
• How decide what a person knows now, much less
  what they knew then?
• What special procedures (measures) will expert
  use?
• How measure defect of reason, disease of mind,
  knowledge?
• How determine causal link?

12
Durham Decision

• Not responsible if act was the product of a
  mental disease.
• Act caused by mental disease.
• No longer knowledge
• Now mental disease is the focus
• Who defines mental disease?

13
Problems with Durham

• Psychiatrists speak in theoretical language,
  e.g., DSM IV or V.
• Lists symptoms (behavioral signs) that define
  different mental diseases
• If you have done 7 out of 9, youre sick
• But what is causal connection between symptom
  list and criminal action?

14
Psychiatric Reasoning

• What defines expert
• Confirmatory bias
• Lack of consensus about behavioral categories
• Remember the aliens
• Ignoring baserates

15
Defeating Facts

• Most depend on intention
• Self-defense
• Accident
• Temporary Insanity (Emotional Rage)
• Diminished Capacity (twinkies, drugs, alcohol,
  head injury, etc.)

16
Rethinking Crime

• Crime includes violation of social (legal) rules
• Law as subset of all rules for social interaction
• Nature of actions in situations with particular
  consequences as part of rule system
• Crime includes mental states (inferred from?)
• Mental state of perp
• Victims state of mind
• Mind of the police, prosecutor, and juror