VIRUS Band 14, pp. 285-300, 2020/07/23
Schwerpunkt: Gesellschaft und Psychiatrie in Österreich 1945 bis ca. 1970
The text deals with the medical psychiatric and the legal discourse on conditions for thedetention of offenders, who committed offences in the status of (diminished) incapacity and on the establishment of special institutions. The discourse took place in the 1950s, but since it was part of the reform of penal law, regulations were only enforced twenty years later. Representatives of psychiatry who had been invited to the debates on the reform took up concepts which had been discussed within their profession in the late 19th century and in the First Republic between the two World Wars, but dropped during the Nazi regime. They succeeded in shaping the forensic mental hospital („Maßnahmenvollzug“) enforced in 1975 and the regulations for incapacitated offenders in effect until today.
Keywords: Incapacitated offenders, detention, penal law reform, forensic mental hospital, forensic psychiatry
