The social construction of evil in a forensic setting

Abstract This paper is a product of serendipity. It explores how wardbased psychiatric nurses in one Special Hospital attribute the notion of ‘evil’ to deviant activities. Staff were asked to read and make comments about a series of vignettes, abbreviated offence scenarios, from which emerged the construction of a taxonomic order of evil. These explanations of evil were then juxtaposed alongside their counterparts from theodicy. Deviancy attributed to extreme psychoticism is not credited with being an evil act, such individuals having a primordial contract of innocence. In contrast, extreme crimes committed by those with a psychopathic disorder are considered evil. An evil act is seen to be one which transgresses a ‘natural boundary’; the product of purposeful action after the accumulation of stages of ‘reality testing’; and, finally, a consequence of the extinction of moral bonding leading to residual instinctive behaviour.