Gross Negligence Manslaughter in Healthcare: Time for a Restorative Justice Approach?

This article explores the merits of employing a restorative justice approach in cases of gross negligence manslaughter involving healthcare professionals, in line with the recent policy turn towards developing a just culture in addressing episodes of healthcare malpractice within the National Health Service in England. It is argued that redress for victims and rehabilitation of offenders should operate as key values, underpinning the adoption of a restorative justice approach in such cases. It would also be vital that a structured pathway was designed that established suitable protocols and safeguards for both victims and offenders taking account of problematic issues such as the informality of the process, power asymmetries between parties, and the context in which the offence took place. Taking all such matters into account, we propose that consideration be given to establishing a pilot involving the use of restorative justice in cases of gross negligence manslaughter involving healthcare professionals, which would be subject to judicial and stakeholder oversight to ensure transparency and accountability, which in turn could inform future policy options.

Meeting the Needs of Justice-Involved People With Serious Mental Illness Within Community Behavioral Health Systems.

The overrepresentation of people with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system is a complex problem. A long-standing explanation for this phenomenon, the criminalization hypothesis, posits that policy changes that shifted the care of people with serious mental illness from psychiatric hospitals to an underfunded community treatment setting resulted in their overrepresentation within the criminal justice system. This framework has driven the development of interventions to connect people with serious mental illness to needed mental health and substance use treatment, a critical component for people in need. However, the criminalization hypothesis is a limited explanation of the overrepresentation of people with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system because it downplays the social and economic forces that have contributed to justice system involvement in general and minimizes the complex clinical, criminogenic, substance use, and social services needs of people with serious mental illness. A new approach is needed that focuses on addressing the multiple factors that contribute to justice involvement for this population. Although the authors' proposed approach may be viewed as aspirational, they suggest that an integrated community-based behavioral health system-i.e., intercept 0-serve as the focal point for coordinating and integrating services for justice-involved people with serious mental illness.

Factors Related to Rape Reporting Behavior in Brazil: Examining the Role of Spatio-Temporal Factors.

The reporting of rape to police is an important component of this crime to have the criminal justice system involved and, potentially, punish offenders. However, for a number of reasons (fear of retribution, self-blame, etc.), most rapes are not reported to police. Most often, the research investigating this phenomenon considers incident and victim factors with little attention to the spatio-temporal factors of the rape. In this study, we consider incident, victim, and spatio-temporal factors relating to rape reporting in Campinas, Brazil. Our primary research question is whether or not the spatio-temporal factors play a significant role in the reporting of rape, over and above incident and victim factors. The subjects under study are women who were admitted to the Women's Integrated Healthcare Center at the State University of Campinas, Brazil, and surveyed by a psychologist or a social worker. Rape reporting to police was measured using a dichotomous variable. Logistic regression was used to predict the probability of rape reporting based on incident, victim, and spatio-temporal factors. Although we find that incident and victim factors matter for rape reporting, spatio-temporal factors (rape/home location and whether the rape was in a private or public place) play an important role in rape reporting, similar to the literature that considers these factors. This result has significant implications for sexual violence education. Only when we know why women decide not to report a rape may we begin to work on strategies to overcome these hurdles.

How do international lawyers handle facts? The role of folk sociological theories at the International Criminal Court.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates international crimes committed in different parts of the world. Earlier scholarly analysis of the work performed by the ICC judges has pointed out that judges often lack cultural and national understanding of the local norms and customs of regions where defendants come from. This article treats this lack of contextual knowledge displayed by the court as a case of structural ignorance rather than an aberration to be 'exposed' or censured. International lawyers indeed must ground their legal narratives with plausible sociological explanations of contextual elements to overcome their lack of familiarity with the field and the scarcity of their investigative resources. By uncovering the role of 'folk sociological theories' (FSTs) in the establishment of facts in a court context, this article addresses the debate over the efficiency of international criminal justice by highlighting the need to bring historical truth back in. The empirical evidence is based on several years of participant observation in the ICC during the trials against Mathieu Ngudjolo and Germain Katanga, two militiamen from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Intentional or Negligent Homicide? Evidence for Juror Decision Making.

The present study examined the influence of specific evidence and testimonies on a juror's decision to make a verdict of intentional or negligent homicide in a Civil law country. Italian students (N = 280; M age = 25.0 years, SD = 2.9) read different affidavits characterized by the presence or absence of three elements against the defendant: motive, skill in use of weapons, and previous violence toward the victim. Participants then decided a verdict and provided a confidence judgment on their decision. Results showed that the presence of motive, skill, and previous violence influenced the jurors' decision, significantly changing the verdict from negligent to intentional homicide. The findings were discussed in terms of the folk-concept approach of intentionality.

Use of Rorschach tests at the Nuremberg war crimes trial: A forgotten chapter in history of medicine.

Seventy years ago, psychiatrists and psychologists had unusual access to the Nazi leaders awaiting trial by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Early leaders in the field of psychosomatic medicine were instrumental in facilitating these interviews as well as arranging for the administration of psychological testing with the Rorschach inkblot test. These observations were kept under wraps for decades and there remains controversy even now about what these Rorschachs revealed-demonic psychopaths or just morally corrupt individuals.

Rendering justice in witch trials: the case of the val de Lièpvre.

The borderland of the val de Lièpvre, with lands in Alsace and in the Duchy of Lorraine, and divided by religion and language, offers a rich collection of sources for the history of witchcraft persecution. The territory sharply reveals what was undoubtedly characteristic of witchcraft trials more widely. The crime of witchcraft was considered abominable before the Christian community and God, and its prosecution justified abandoning many of the safeguards and constraints in legal procedure, whether restrictions on the use of torture, the reliance on dubious testimony or even denial of advocacy to the witches. The action of the judges was nonetheless, as they understood it, the rendering of true justice, by punishing the culprits with a harshness that would expiate their crimes before the community and preserve them from damnation in the face of God's judgment.