Crime and Punishment and Psychiatry

Reviews the book, The Urge to Punish: New Approaches to the Problems of Mental Irresponsibility for Crime by Henry Weihofen (1956). The subject of the book is the assessment of mental irresponsibility for crime, a topic that the author treats in a highly penetrating, incisive, and often fascinating...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Contemporary psychology 1957-06, Vol.2 (6), p.170-171
Main Author: BLUM, GERALD S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Crime
Criminal Behavior
Human
Legal Processes
Psychiatry
Punishment
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Reviews the book, The Urge to Punish: New Approaches to the Problems of Mental Irresponsibility for Crime by Henry Weihofen (1956). The subject of the book is the assessment of mental irresponsibility for crime, a topic that the author treats in a highly penetrating, incisive, and often fascinating fashion. Numerous passages in the book deal with deep-sounding but rather superficial analyses of people's motives-in judge, juror, and general public, as well as in lawyers and criminals. The theme conveyed by the title is that the general public shares much of the blame for the present unsatisfactory legal situation because of its insistence on punishment for wrongdoing. The concluding section pursues the point with specific reference to the evils of capital punishment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
ISSN:0010-7549
DOI:10.1037/005533