Blaming rape on sleep: A psychoanalytic intervention.

The governance of sleep sex (or sexsomnia) in the criminal law is a nightmare. Press reports of sleeping, often drunk, men acquitted as automatons of raping adults and children suggest cases are rising. The use of automatism, rather than insanity, in these cases is strong evidence of the immemorial struggle faced by legal psychiatry in appropriately construing unconscious defendants. This paper responds by drawing on well-established psychoanalytic conceptions of unconsciousness to present sexsomnia as dispositional to the defendant. Taking the Freudian concepts of eros and death instinct, it asserts that sexsomniacs are acting on repressed sadistic desires. Accordingly, those on notice of their sexsomnia, who fail to mitigate the risk of further attacks, should be guilty of rape. Reliance on (a reformed) insanity defence - being a denial of responsibility at the time of the offence - undermines the scope of the criminal law to self-responsibilise sexsomniacs against perpetrating unwanted sex.

Severe personality disorder, treatment engagement and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012: what you need to know.

Empirical research has demonstrated a link between legal coercion and treatment engagement following conviction among those with severe personality disorder. Legal coercive pressures were often applied by the Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection (IPP), until it was replaced by the Extended Determinate Sentence by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. In this paper, it is proposed that use of the new determinate sentence will lessen motivation for treatment engagement. One effect of treatment refusal may be greater reliance by the Secretary of State for Justice on his jurisdiction to transfer prisoners due for release to secure hospital transfers under the Mental Health Act 1983. Not only will this risk posturing undermine the principal aim of the Offender Personality Disorder Implementation Pathway to improve treatment engagement among the target group, it will also have negative implications for medical practitioners working in secure forensic hospitals. To demonstrate what is at stake, the paper briefly recapitulates empirical findings familiar to readers of the journal, before drawing on original unpublished data.

THE OFFENDER PERSONALITY DISORDER PATHWAY: RISKING REHABILITATION?

Following over a decade of treatment refusal by 'risky' offenders preventively detained in Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder hospital and prison units, the coalition government now aims to improve treatment engagement in high secure prisons by clarifying pathways out of detention. This article asks whether the reconfiguration will end reliance upon preventive detention for public protection. Drawing on original empirical data collected by the author, it is argued that the government is unaware that offenders with 'severe personality disorder' appear to engage with treatment only if it increases their chances of achieving expedited parole. Hitherto, this incentive was provided by the Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection; its replacement with determinate sentences under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 will worsen treatment engagement, because they provide offenders with a prison release date. The troubling result may be increased reliance by the Secretary of State for Justice on his inherent jurisdiction under the Mental Health Act 1983 to transfer offenders due for prison release to secure psychiatric hospitals. To counter this limitation of risk-focused decision-making, it is proposed that judges be able to impose a new hybrid order combining a custodial term with a subsequent community mental health treatment requirement.

Rehabilitating antisocial personalities: treatment through self-governance strategies.

Offenders with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) are widely assumed to reject psychotherapeutic intervention. Some commentators, therefore, argue that those with the disorder are better managed in the criminal justice system, where, following the introduction of indeterminate sentences, engagement with psychological treatment is coercively linked to the achievement of parole. By comparison, National Institute of Clinical Excellence guidelines on the management and treatment of ASPD recommend that those who are treatment seeking should be considered for admission to specialist psychiatric hospitals. The rationale is that prison-based interventions are underresourced, and the treatment of ASPD is underprioritised. The justification is that offenders with ASPD can be rehabilitated, if they are motivated. One problem, however, is that little is known about why offenders with ASPD seek treatment or what effect subsequent treatment has on their self-understanding. The aim of this paper is to address these unresolved issues. It draws on the findings of Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded qualitative study examining the experiences of sentenced male offenders admitted to a specialist personality disorder ward within the medium secure estate and the medical practitioners who treat them. The data are analysed with reference to Michel Foucault's work on governmentality and strategy in power relations. Two arguments are advanced: first, offenders with ASPD are motivated by legal coercive pressures to implement a variety of Foucauldian-type strategies to give the false impression of treatment progress. Second, and related, treatment does not result in changes in self-understanding in the resistive client with ASPD. This presupposes that, in respect of this group at least, Foucault was mistaken in his claim that resistive behaviours merely mask the effectiveness of treatment norms over time. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that specialist treatment in the hospital setting can effect changes in the resistive offender's self-understanding, but not if the completion of treatment results, as is commonplace, in his prison readmission.

Admitting offenders with antisocial personality disorder to a medium secure unit: a qualitative examination of multidisciplinary team decision-making.

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) looking at multidisciplinary team decisions to admit sentenced offenders with antisocial personality disorder to a medium secure unit. The aim of the study was to examine admission decision-making from a multidisciplinary perspective, and to explore the interprofessional dynamics and contextual pressures informing those decisions. The primary method of data collection was 12 semi-structured interviews with a convenience sample of various multidisciplinary staff involved in pre-admission assessment and post-assessment decision-making. Data was then coded according to the dialectic of competitive and cooperative goal seeking within groups. The findings suggest that, whilst both forms of goal seeking inform admission decisions, the presence of significant resource pressures will lead to decisional solidarity among the multidisciplinary team. When minor professional disagreements arise, they are resolved by the group leader, the Responsible Clinician, in order to maximise group productivity. It is argued that the discursive-limiting effect of resource pressures on group decision-making may weaken the morale of certain front line staff, if not undermine institutional purpose.