Introduction: The Silent Scream

Abstract

This book is about silence. The medicalisation, or more specifically the psychiatrisation, of the criminal has been a creeping and sweeping force for 200 years (Foucault, 1978). Its justification and legitimation has relied upon acquiescence, dependence and silence: acquiescence because of a need for loyalty to its cause, dependence on its agents for its success, and the silence of its critics. The medicalisation of the criminal is a fait accompli, now rationalised in the care and management of the mentally disordered offender. In Britain the institutions of its power have been the Special Hospitals, prison hospital wings, regional and medium secure units and more recently community services.

Confinement, prisons, dungeons, even tortures, engaged in a mute dialogue between reason and unreason — the dialogue of struggle. This dialogue itself was now disengaged; silence was absolute. (Foucault, 1967)