Legal insanity in The Netherlands:Regulations and reflections

This chapter discusses the characteristics of the insanity defence in the Dutch criminal justice system. In the Netherlands, a state with a moderately inquisitorial system, insanity evaluations can be ordered by the prosecution or by the court. In only a small minority of cases is the defence raised by the defendant. A first characteristic of the Dutch insanity defence is that there is no legal criterion specifying the conditions under which the presence of a mental illness substantiates an insanity plea. This is different from other legal systems, where the criteria for insanity are usually s... Mehr ...