Mental state, intention and responsibility
A crime is defined as an act that is capable of being followed by criminal proceedings. In any offences, the accused should be proven on whether he has physically done the act (actus reus) or that the act has casued the offending consequences. Secondly, the accused should be assessed on whether he/she has intention to do it (mens rea). Three other forms of intent that needed to be taken into considerations are: Recklessness, Negligence and Accident.
Recklessness is defined as the deliberate taking of an unjustifiable risk. A man is reckless with respect to the consequences of his act, when he foresees it may occur but does not desire it (e.g. pulling the trigger of a gun that you do not know whether
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Risk factors for violence in the mentally ill patients can be divided into four types: Dispositional factors, clinical factors, historical factors and contextual factors ( Monahan and Steadman (1994). Dispositional risk factors look into the factors that reflect a person’s characteristics, personalities and styles of interacting. It is usually related to anger, impulsivity, and psychopathy. Mr. LKM fulfilled these risk factors.
The Clinical Risk Factors comprises of the manifestation of the patient’s psychiatric disorders. Areas to be considered within this domain are schizophrenia, mood disorders, personality disorders and substance uses disorders. Delusions can lead to harmful behaviour and it is usually the strongest links between persecutrory ideas to the wish to harm others.
The historical and contextual risk factors explain that the events in the past can be used to predict the patient’s future behaviour. This is especially true if we look into the many numbers of past histories of violence. Their family support and social network also play a large role. Not to forget are the factors of age, sec, race, socioeconomic stateus, marital status, personality, neurobiological factors and intellectual functions. In this context, the mid to late adolescent years, male gender, lower socioeconomic status, organic brain pathology, and lower IQ relects increase in the risk of crime and