Forensic Brain-Reading and Mental Privacy in European Human Rights Law: Foundations and Challenges.

A central question in the current neurolegal and neuroethical literature is how brain-reading technologies could contribute to criminal justice. Some of these technologies have already been deployed within different criminal justice systems in Europe, including Slovenia, Italy, England and Wales, and the Netherlands, typically to determine guilt, legal responsibility, or recidivism risk. In this regard, the question arises whether brain-reading could permissibly be used against the person's will.

Closed-Loop Brain Devices in Offender Rehabilitation: Autonomy, Human Rights, and Accountability.

The current debate on closed-loop brain devices (CBDs) mainly focuses on their use in a medical context; possible criminal justice applications have only received incidental scholarly attention. Unlike in medicine, in criminal justice, CBDs might be offered on behalf of the State and for the purpose of protecting security, rather than realizing healthcare aims. It would be possible to deploy CBDs in the rehabilitation of convicted offenders, similarly to the much-debated possibility of employing other brain interventions in this context.

Is Virtually Everything Possible? The Relevance of Ethics and Human Rights for Introducing Extended Reality in Forensic Psychiatry.

Extended Reality (XR) systems, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), provide a digital simulation either of a complete environment, or of particular objects within the real world. Today, XR is used in a wide variety of settings, including gaming, design, engineering, and the military. In addition, XR has been introduced into psychology, cognitive sciences and biomedicine for both basic research as well as diagnosing or treating neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Forensic psychiatric evaluations of defendants: Italy and the Netherlands compared.

Background: Forensic psychiatric practices and provisions vary considerably across jurisdictions. The diversity provides the possibility to compare forensic psychiatric practices, as we will do in this paper regarding Italy and the Netherlands.

Aim: We aim to perform a theoretical analysis of legislations dealing with the forensic psychiatric evaluation of defendants, including legal insanity and the management of mentally ill offenders deemed insane.

Who Establishes the Presence of a Mental Disorder in Defendants? Medicolegal Considerations on a European Court of Human Rights Case.

Legal insanity is a peculiar element of criminal law, because it brings together two very different disciplines: psychiatry and psychology on the one hand and the law on the other. One of the basic questions regarding evaluations of defendants concerns the question of who should establish "true mental disorder," the judge or the behavioral expert? This question is complicated, and in this contribution it will be explored based on a Dutch case that was eventually decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). We will argue that the ECtHR provides a valuable legal framework.