Infringing Women: Insanity and Danger in the Dock
The thesis starts from two perspectives: on the one hand, the closing of psychiatric institutions and the consequent prison overcrowding, on the other, the request for the opening of vacancies in Custody and Psychiatric Treatment Hospitals (HCTPs) by the Judiciary for the admission of women diagnosed with mental problems that committed a criminal offense. In this context, the main problem of this work is to investigate how the woman who arrives at the Judiciary for having committed a criminal offense diagnosed with mental problems is now represented before the medico-legal authorities. It deals with the stigma of mental illness and how it contributes to determine their social exclusion by promoting permanent hospitalization, since the end of the hospitalization security measure is conditioned to the reduction of a dangerousness inherent to mental illness. Therefore, it analyzes the contradictory discourse between the treatment of this woman and the attribution of permanent dangerousness. In this way, the research seeks to identify the psychiatric and legal discourses that influence the trial and takes as an empirical basis cases that arrived at the São Paulo Jury Tribunal (TJSP) and uses as a methodology the documentary research and analysis of TJSP sentences and processes. The speeches showed that, from the diagnosis of mental problems, the judgment starts to be regulated by the presumption that dangerousness is inherent to mental illness. As a result, the woman stops being judged for the crime and medical knowledge is imposed and weakens the guarantees of criminal law.