정신질환자 중 사이코패스(Psychopath)에 대한 형사법적 대처방안

Dealing with Psychopaths in Criminology

&nbsp;&nbsp;Although it is not a hard task to define psychopathy as an acknowledged mental disease or mental defect in medicine, the matter gets more complicated when it comes to criminal justice, because criminal justices involves matters of punishing people who commit any wrongdoing while they can appreciate the criminality of their actions. Psychopaths are not the people who lack the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. They know what they do is either right or wrong. However, they are not being affected by how they see the world. Psychopaths are the people having great potentials to be habitual criminals because they do not feel any remorse even if their act amounts to be heinious in nature. That is, psychopaths might be insane from the psychatrists’ point of view, but they should be construed to be legally sane human beings. Psychopaths should be treated differently from psychotics. Otherwise, we will have the culture of setting the dangerous psychopaths free.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In Korea, even though most courts punish psychopaths with harsh sentences, sometimes the fact that they are mentally ill in a clinical sense are being taken into consideration when judges give sentences. In other words, there is no rule governing how to treat psychopaths. That should change. One useful example which can be used to legislate any laws on that matter is Section 4.01 of Model Penal Code of the United States of America. The Section specifically excludes psychopaths from the people getting any benefits of being mentally ill or mentally defective in medicine.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;One can argue that psychopaths are the people who should not be jailed but be hospitalized. However, the doubt whether they are the subjects for medical cure lingers. At the moment, a firm stance on the issue of punishing psychopaths with the same or even harsher degree of punishment should be made.