Citation

Bergenheim A. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2014; 37(1): 99-108.

Affiliation

Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umea University, SE-901 87, Sweden. Electronic address: asa.bergenheim@kau.se.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2013.10.003

PMID

24315847

Abstract

After forensic psychiatry was firmly established in Sweden in the 1930s, many rapists and individuals charged with assaulting children underwent a forensic psychiatric examination. The physicians found that most of them had not been "in control" of their senses or not "in complete control" of their senses at the time of the crime. If the court ordered a forensic psychiatric examination, the defendant had a very good chance of either being discharged or having his sentence reduced considerably. By the 1950s psychological perspectives began to dominate in forensic psychiatry. In the forensic records of the 1950s we can notice a shift from a biomedical to a socio-psychological perspective, and crime was increasingly related to conditions that were not seen as mental derangement from a legal point of view. As a result, it became less and less common, from the 1950s onwards, for sentences to be commuted or defendants discharged.

Language: en