{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.017857142857142856, 'fraction_numerical': 0.002329192546583851, 'mean_word_length': 5.3161764705882355, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Concept of Diminished Responsibility in Supranational Criminal Law (Psychiatric Approach)

Mental incapacity defences in international criminal law prosecutions play a small but important role. There is the risk that they will be asserted without adequate warrant but in terms of fairness it is vital that such defences be able to be ventilated fully and that they provide a full excuse where the strength of the expert evidence justifies such a course. Much then depends upon both the wording of statutory provisions and upon the psychiatric evidence that is adduced and tested in the relevant courts. Goreta’s important monograph deals with this challenging balance. Goreta is a forensic neuropsychiatrist and the head of the Clinical Department of the Psychiatric Hospital Vrapce and of the Referral Centre for Forensic Psychiatry of the Republic of Croatia Ministry of Health and Social Care. He observes that with the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) new issues are raised, although in most analyses the concept of ‘diminished responsibility’ has been regarded as largely borrowed from the English tradition. He regards ‘the problem of diminished responsibility’ as more difficult than ‘the issue of non-responsibility’, which is largely reserved for those with severe mental disorders characterised by psychosis. He notes that the problematic notion of ‘substantially diminished criminal responsibility’ was removed from Croatian criminal law in 1998. Goreta observes that while Article 12 of the Criminal Law of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia explicitly provided for diminished responsibility, the Roma Statute, the basic legal framework for the International Criminal Court (ICC), does not. However, under that framework a person is not criminally responsible if, at the time of their conduct, they suffered from a mental disease or defect that ‘destroyed’ the person’s capacity to appreciate the unlawfulness or nature of their conduct of capacity to control their conduct to conform to the requirements of law. Goreta argues in favour of harmonising the law and establishing a new psychiatric part of the legislation governing the ICC, entrusting the task of drafting it to the International Academy of Law and Mental Health. He maintains that retention of the category of ‘diminished responsibility’ is justified for both the ICTY and the ICC. He contends for the replacement of what he terms the obsolete concepts of ‘abnormality of mind’ and ‘mental disease’ by the more modern and clearer