Therapeutic jurisprudence and problem-solving courts

Abstract

There is temptation to talk of paradigms shifts in criminal justice. In recent years, therapeutic jurisprudence and problem-solving courts have been identified as ideas that have affected the conceptualization and operation of common-law system. Its basic premises about treatment instead of punishment remind on the assumptions of positivist school of criminology, a social movement developed in the continental Europe during the 1800s and early 1900s, meritorious for promotion of security measure as a special type of criminal sanction in civil law system. The ideas are the same, but approaches of two opposing systems are different. The purpose of this paper is to explore these different approaches, analyzing therapeutic jurisprudence, problem solving courts and security measures. Basic assumptions of therapeutic justice and development of this concept are analyzed in the first part of the research. Second part deals with problem solving courts, its emergence, reasons of establishment and procedure in front of them, while the last part is dedicated to medical security measures, their regulation in civil law systems and different approaches of regular and problem solving courts in dealing with the offenders that need medical treatment.