This lecture will explain and critically discuss the Norwegian regulation of criminal insanity. Professor Linda Gröning will pay specific attention to the legal reform that has taken place in the aftermath of Anders Behring Breivik’s killing of 77 people in Oslo and on Utøya in Norway on 22 July 2011.
Norwegian criminal law uses a ‘medical model’ for the definition of criminal insanity. Under the current section 20 first paragraph, letter b. of the Penal Code, a defendant who is psychotic at the time of the offence is absolved from criminal responsibility. This provision essentially equates criminal insanity with being psychotic, and does not operate with any criteria requiring causality, or any other additional (psychological) criteria as is the case in many countries.
After the 22 July case, this regulation of criminal insanity was subject to critique. It was argued that the definition of insanity in terms of psychosis gives an erroneous delimitation of who should be absolved from criminal responsibility and that it provides forensic experts with too much power. A law commission (where Professor Gröning was a member) was appointed by the government to consider the need for legal reforms.
After a long legislative process, full of conflicting views and controversies, new rules have now been enacted that remove the psychosis criterion (but does not entirely abolish the medical model) and opens the doors for a greater degree of judicial discretion.
In this Leicester De Montfort Law School lecture, Professor Gröning will provide an explanation of the medical model in Norwegian law, including its operationalization in legal and forensic practice, its background and the justifications for tying psychosis to criminal insanity. The lecture will also discuss the legal reform process, and provide some critical reflections on the new criminal insanity rules that this process has now resulted in.
Linda Gröning is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Bergen, and a Senior Researcher at the Competence Centre for forensic psychiatry, Haukeland Hospital in Bergen, Norway.
The event will be chaired by Professor Ronnie Mackay.