Criteria of insanity and its application in the law and judicial and investigatory practice

Belyankina Valentina Alexandrovna

In this article, the author substantiates the selection of the criteria for insanity in criminal law science. The relevance of this topic is determined by a combination of problems in criminal law and forensic psychiatry, where insanity is considered in the pathology of the human psyche and their manifestations. The statement that the violation of behaviour and interaction with the outside world in a person occurs in the event of a mental illness, allows you to separate the concepts of "sanity" and "insanity" in the legislation. The main criteria considered: medical (biological), psychological (psychiatric) and legal (criminal law). The analysis of the above criteria for insanity made it possible to conclude that it is important to conduct a forensic medical examination to eliminate contradictions. The purpose of this work is to formulate the basic concept of insanity and its criteria, with special attention paid to three signs of the legal criterion of insanity, on the basis of which the legal criterion is not only a set of signs, but also the rationale for declaring a subject insane. The study of regulatory documents in the field of criminal law, forensic medical examination allowed the author to identify gaps in the field of law enforcement, namely, the absence of a specific, unified algorithm of action to determine the insanity of a subject.

Keywords:insanity; medical criterion, psychological criterion, legal criterion, tort, circumstances excluding liability.