Evaluating the Criminal Act: Between Treatment and Sanctions
The clinical evaluation, which involves standardization and objectification, takes on a peculiar form when applied to the field of criminal justice. It requires understanding criminal acts in terms of categories that extrapolate and reduce them on the one hand to the formalized relation between the evaluator and the offender and, on the other hand, obscure the psychodynamic meaning of the act. While the scientific interest of this reduction is evident, as it permits comparisons and the calculation of statistics, interest in the case-mix is weaker. It permits us to define an individual in terms of a pre-determined category, but the prediction of risk remains a mere probability. The final objective of risk assessment and care for violent offenders is to provide results. But is evaluation an integral part of the care and the sanction ? Or is it only a social requirement ? We hypothesize that the ambiguity about the purpose of psychiatric or psychological care, as it is perceived by clinicians and as it is assigned by society, is not the only cause of confusion between the objectives and the means of clinical evaluations. If psychiatry is entrusted with a role in social defence, it would not be because of its effectiveness in terms of reducing recidivism or predicting behaviour, but because of the coercive means that it can develop – sometimes by suspending the punishment.