Insanity, Disability and Responsibility: Rethinking Autonomy to Challenge Structural Inequality

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) operates as a lens of analysis to show that the insanity doctrine and its dispositions discriminate against the category of people with mental disabilities to whom the defence applies. However, while identifying the discrimination perpetuated by the insanity doctrine, this article argues that the CRPD Committee has failed to uncover the ultimate source of disadvantage of which the doctrine is merely symptomatic. Instead, it is argued that the criminal justice system entrenches a notion of ‘capacity-responsibility’ which situates the mentally disabled defendant as the ‘other’. In an attempt to challenge this embedded structural injustice, the article thus calls on the CRPD Committee for a more holistic application of the CRPD, to provide the tools to challenge that will move towards greater equality for people with mental disabilities.