Medical safety measures in criminal law are types of safety measures that are defined by the use of therapeutic interventions to eliminate the source of danger (mental disorder). Out of the known medical safety measures, two types of compulsory psychiatric treatment are known in Slovenian criminal legislation. The two measures represent an entanglement of criminal law and psychiatry, two fields with opposing assumptions with regards to free will and the priority when it comes to the welfare of the individual or the societal order. Differences among fields of expertise and viewpoints on the treatment of offenders have sparked discussions about the suitability of the therapeutic treatment of mentally disordered offenders as a part of criminal law. I open the master’s thesis by describing the development of medical safety measures and continue by describing the Slovenian system of medical safety measures. In the last part, I give an overview and my evaluation of arguments pro et contra the placement of medical measures in criminal law. I believe that with the exclusion of medical measures and holistic systematization of measures in the field of mental health law, we would achieve a dogmatically consistent system which enables sensible and equal treatment of all patients with mental disorders.
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