Psychiatry, criminal law and social danger in the Second Republic

This paper analyses the psychiatric and legal arguments that held that mentally ill, abnormal, and maladjusted people were a danger to society. During the Second Republic, psychiatrists and jurists collaborated to create institutions such as the Institute of Criminal Studies (1932) and the Criminal Biology Service (1933) and were decisive in the promulgation of the Law of Vagrants and Miscreants (1933). This law aimed at combatting behaviours considered potentially dangerous by means of prevention and the application of rehabilitative security measures