A criminological study of delinquency in India with special reference to psychopaths

Abstract

Psychopathy is perceived today as being the most important concept in the criminal justice system and as the most important legal notion of the early 21th century. The explosion of research related to psychopathy seems to perfectly illustrate this trend. In our society the psychopath represents 1% of the total population and 15% of the prison population. But our knowledge in this area is very finite. Although there is a very vast documentation on all the aspects of delinquency and criminology, the amount of research carried out in the area of psychopaths in India is very limited. There are number of reasons for this neglect. One of the most important reason is that most of the cases relating to psychopathy goes unreported and moreover there is no law in our country which deals specifically with psychopaths. Another reason was that although there is vast literature on the topic of psychopaths but there is no particular literature in India relating to psychopaths, reasons behind psychopathic crimes, the treatment and reformative approaches that are to be undertaken to control these psychopathic crimes. Another reason for taking up this study was to find out the answer to the question that whether there is a need to amend the Indian Criminal System to include psychopathy as a defense to criminal acts? The researcher through her work has highlight this gap and the need for literature in this area.