The historical evolution of involuntary psychiatric detention as the sole measure of social response to prohibited acts committed by offenders lacking criminal responsibility, as exemplified by the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

Although involuntary psychiatric admission serves a protective function, guarding against the threat posed by an offender and helping to prevent them from committing crimes, it is always highly burdensome and constitutes a deprivation of liberty (basic human and civil rights). People with mental disorders are confined to a highly restricted and closed environment, physically isolated from the outside world, and required to follow a top-down treatment plan. The article aims to examine the reality of British psychiatric hospitals and prisons from a historical perspective. This paper also examines the British regulations and provides an analysis of legal matters connected with the evolution of control procedures designed to prevent violations of the rights of patients, the legal status of offenders with mental disorders, therapeutic conditions, and existing oversight mechanisms. It also points out other procedural consequences of different legal instruments regulating the treatment of persons suffering from mental disorders. The main methods were a dogmatic-legal and a historical approach. The analysis was theoretical and was based on normative materials, legal doctrine, court rulings, and newspaper articles. The article concludes that (i) in the Victorian era, involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation was highly repressive, long-term, and violated fundamental rights and freedoms of persons with mental disorders. Persons with mental disorders were confined in prisons as well as in private and public psychiatric institutions, where conditions were absolutely unacceptable; (ii) the development of academic psychiatry and advances in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders contributed to greater respect for human rights and to the enactment of more humane legislation in this area. The conditions and quality of care for hospitalised patients improved significantly.