The legal criterion of insanity and the category of guilt from the point of view of science

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Tkachenko AA, Demidova LYu. [The legal criterion of insanity and the category of guilt from the point of view of science]. Rossiiskii psikhiatricheskii zhurnal [Russian Journal of Psychiatry]. 2025;(2):15-26. Russian

Abstract

This review analyzes the history of the modern formulation of the legal criterion of insanity in Russian criminal law and the legislative provisions regarding the objectivity, scientific validity and reliability of the expert conclusion in order to substantiate the main subject of expert forensic psychiatric research and forensic psychiatry as a research discipline. The article demonstrates the inseparability between the concepts of insanity and guilt. It considers the ideas of criminal law about guilty and innocent harm. The limitations of the humanitarian paradigm of forensic psychiatric research are analyzed with the reasoning of the necessity of supporting the expert’s conclusion with objective data of the natural sciences. New advances in the field of neuroscience and the possibilities of using them for justification of the expert decisions are analyzed. It is proposed to consider the phenomena underlying the concept of guilt as the most promising for reasoning the legal criterion of insanity.

Keywords guilt; insanity; legal criterion; forensic neuroscience; subject of forensic psychiatry

References

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