The Norwegian penal law is one of the very few in the world that adheres to what is referred to as the medical principle. The medical principle implies that a person with a diagnosis that involves an active ongoing psychosis should be regarded as insane.
This Friday, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik hears his verdict. It will do little to console the wreckage of the living. A writer who covered the events and the court case reflects on the impossibility of justice.
Last month, a Siberian gang leader accused of dozens of murders was unexpectedly given a prison sentence. Could it be that Russia is finally getting to grips with organised criminality? There is more to this case than meets the eye, says Aleksei Tarasov
Cutting through the coalition government’s rhetoric of localism and ‘community rights’, Dexter Whitfield exposes a strategy to further destabilise and fracture public provision, accelerating marketisation and privatisation.
The break-up of the Soviet Union made foreign travel for Russians much easier, except, paradoxically, over the internal Soviet borders that previously required no passports or visas. The border guards that now patrol these crossings have too little to do and often turn to extortion in an attempt t
While the world’s biggest security firm has suffered international humiliation over its mishandling of the London Olympics, another more modest piece of business has been unravelling in its hands.
Monitor, the lead regulator of NHS, is already easing the ‘regulatory burden’ borne by private companies enjoying the new market for healthcare in England. How does this square with the body's primary remit to "protect the interests of patients"?
The routine demonisation and vilification of migrant workers is underpinning the spread of racist violence into new areas in the UK. But it is rarely politically acknowledged.
Many democratically-minded Russians have seized upon the recent re-criminalisation of defamation as an further example of Russia’s regression during Putin’s third term. They miss the point, argues Poel Karp: Russia does need a law on defamation, but that law needs to apply to everyone, including t
When twelve-year-old Lyosha tried to escape a children’s home to return to his family, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital — an abuse of psychiatry immediately reminiscent of Soviet days. Lyosha was eventually saved only by the investigative curiosity of local journalists, Aleksandr Koltsov and
As immigration detainees continue to suffer injury, neglect and even death, the charity Medical Justice challenges the apparent impunity of the UK immigration authorities and their commercial contractors.
