Description
Book SynopsisThe meaning of criminal responsibility emerged in early- to mid-twentieth-century Canadian capital murder cases through a complex synthesis of socio-cultural, medical, and legal processes. Kimberley White places the negotiable concept of responsibility at the centre of her interdisciplinary inquiry, rather than the more fixed legal concepts of insanity or guilt. In doing so she brings subtlety to more general arguments about the historical relationship between law and psychiatry, the insanity defence, and the role of psychiatric expertise in criminal law cases.
Through capital murder case files, White examines how the idea of criminal responsibility was produced, organized, and legitimized in and through institutional structures such as remissions, trial, and post-trial procedures; identity politics of race, character, citizenship, and gender; and overlapping narratives of mind-state and capacity. In particular, she points to the subtle but deeply influential ways in which com
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"The scholarship is both extensive and rigorous. This book will make a pioneering and important contribution to Canadian historiography and social science in the area of mental disorder and justice. - Michael Petrunik, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa"
Table of Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
2 The Making and Mapping of Capital Murder Case Files
3 Criminological Thinking and Ways of “Knowing” the Criminal
4 Negotiating Responsibility in Law’s “Marketplace”: Beyond the Insanity Defence
5 The Racialization of Criminal Responsibility
6 Murder between “Wives” and “Husbands”
7 Concluding Thoughts
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
