Schizophrenia is the most common in forensic psychiatry. The motive, the style and the consequence of any schizophrene's misdeed have its own particularity. So schizophrenia is significant in the forensic practice. The characteristics of schizophrene's misdeed and the peace breaker's responsibility, competence to stand trial and to serve a sentence werereviewed.
Crime/psychology* ; Expert Testimony/standards* ; Forensic Psychiatry/standards* ; Humans ; Liability, Legal ; Mental Competency/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: To study different viewpoints to the conclusion and treatment, And the following up factors concerning social effect after the judgment of forensic psychiatry. METHODS: By letters, calls, visits and by investigation forms made by myself, 208 testimonied cases were followed up separately from judicial organ or other organizations and institutes, individuals testimonied or their family members, victims and their family members. RESULTS: Most testimonied individuals were married man of 30 years old or so whose average education were 4.84 years and testimonied by the public security organs. In criminal cases, violental criminals (129 cases, 83.77%) were much more than non-violental criminals (25 cases, 16.23%) and homicide criminals (44 cases, 28.57%) were most common in the former but civil cases were few. The rate of retstinvony was 2.93%. The testimonied individuals and their family members thought the condemn were appropriate (76.47%) for the people without criminal capacity and thought the condemn were appropriate (41.94%) or not appropriate (41.94%) for the people with criminal capacity. The opinions of the condemn for partial criminal capacity were between the former two cases. And they thought the condemn for 28 cases of non-guilty were appropriate (71.43%) and not appropriate (10.7%). 7 victims were dead. 10 victims were crippled. 10 victims restored to health. In 41 persons testimonied and set free with a verdict of "not guilty", 4 homicided again (4.87%), 2 set on fire (4.87%), 2 stealed (4.87%) and 3 had wrecked behavior (7.31%). CONCLUSION So it is suggested that the department concerned should keep criminals with mental disorder under control and treatment.
Adolescent ; Adult ; Child ; Crime ; Crime Victims ; Expert Testimony ; Female ; Follow-Up Studies ; Forensic Psychiatry/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Humans ; Liability, Legal ; Male ; Mentally Ill Persons/psychology* ; Middle Aged ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Young Adult

Criminal responsibility is divided into three types: full criminal responsibility, diminished criminal responsibility and criminal irresponsibility in China. In forensic psychiatric expertise, doctors often have different opinions about the responsibility in a given case because of lacking objective criteria. The evaluation of criminal responsibility is always unresolved problem in forensic psychiatric expertise. Application of these evaluation tools in forensic psychiatric expertise were reviewed in this article. The value of the tools were still controversial in the reliability and validity, but it is clear that these tools have the positive roles in ensuring the standardization and the uniformity of the forensic investigation.
Crime/psychology* ; Expert Testimony/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Forensic Psychiatry ; Humans ; Liability, Legal ; Mental Competency ; Mental Disorders/psychology* ; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales ; Social Responsibility

OBJECTIVE: To explore the main factors that most influence the psychiatrists in the process of assessing the capacity for criminal for perpetrators of homicide. METHODS: 105 homicide cases were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: The number of cases for no responsibility, reduced responsibility and full responsibility is 41 (39.0%), 28 (26.7%) and 36 (34.3%) respectively. The assessment of capability for criminal responsibility was significantly correlated with three major factors, they are: whether the homicide was driven by psychopathological factors (Gamma = 0.906, P = 0.000), whether the perpetrator was suffering a severe mental disorders (Gamma = 0.761, P = 0.000) and, whether the victim is the perpetrator's family member or relative (Gamma = 0.412, P = 0.000). CONCLUSION Forensic psychiatrists take three major aspects into account in their process in assessing capacity for criminal responsibility, in a descending order, they are: was the homicide driven by pathological motivation? Was the perpetrator suffering from a severe mental disorder? Was the victim a family member or stranger?
Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Crime Victims ; Expert Testimony/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Female ; Forensic Psychiatry ; Homicide/psychology* ; Humans ; Liability, Legal ; Male ; Mental Disorders/psychology* ; Middle Aged ; Personality Disorders/psychology* ; Retrospective Studies ; Sex Distribution ; Substance-Related Disorders/psychology* ; Young Adult

Competency to stand trial relates directly to legal rights of the appraised individual as well as whether criminal procedure can be carried out smoothly. Foreign scholars have conducted a large number of theoretical researches, and developed a series of standardized evaluation tools. However, the assessment on competency to stand trial has mainly focused on medical criteria in China for a long time, and most cases were judged by forensic psychiatrists' experience. Recently, Chinese scholars have started the initial research on standardized evaluation. This paper reviews the notion of competency to stand trial, the evaluation criteria, and the assessment tools domestically and abroad. The main focus is on foreign assessment tools, which included three categories. First category includes checklist, self-report questionnaires and sentence-completion tasks. Second category is the interview-based instruments without criterion-based scoring. Last category is the interview-based instruments with criterion-based scoring. This literature may be helpful for further research and standardization on assessment tools of competency to stand trial of mentally disordered offenders.
Crime/psychology* ; Criminal Law/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Criminals/psychology* ; Forensic Psychiatry/standards* ; Humans ; Insanity Defense ; Mental Competency/psychology* ; Mental Disorders/psychology* ; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales ; Psychological Tests ; Reference Standards ; Reproducibility of Results ; Surveys and Questionnaires

With the development of biotechnology, forensic DNA identification technology in protection of wild animals has been used more and more widely. This review introduces the global status of wildlife crime and the relevant protection to wildlife, outlines the practical applications of forensic DNA identification technology with regard to species identification, determination of geographic origin, individual identification and paternity identification. It focus on the techniques commonly used in DNA typing and their merits and demerits, as well as the problems and prospects of forensic DNA technology for wildlife conservation.
Animals ; Animals, Wild/genetics* ; Commerce/legislation & jurisprudence* ; Conservation of Natural Resources ; Crime/legislation & jurisprudence* ; DNA/genetics* ; DNA Fingerprinting/methods* ; DNA, Mitochondrial/genetics* ; Forensic Genetics ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Polymerase Chain Reaction/methods* ; Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length ; Sequence Analysis, DNA ; Sequence Analysis, Protein ; Species Specificity