Attempted Criminal Offences in Egyptian Criminal Law 'Study and Analysis on How to Apply the General Legal Principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) in Criminal Law Particularly to Attempted Criminal Crimes'

Abstract

Therapeutic jurisprudence is an interdisciplinary perspective that can provide a grounding for the new judicial movement. Generally, therapeutic jurisprudence asks which legal arrangements specifically work and why. Therapeutic jurisprudence began in the area of mental health law, criticizing various aspects of mental health law that seemed, curiously, to produce antitherapeutic consequences for the people that the law was designed to help.Despite its origins in the field of mental health law, therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) soon found easy application to other areas of law, such as criminal law, juvenile law, family law, personal injury law and has now emerged as a therapeutic approach to the law generally. So, we can say that (TJ) is the study of the role of law as a healing agent, and its offers fresh insights into the role of law in society and those who practice it.From the definition given above, we can say that (TJ) focuses on the traditionally unappreciated area of law’s considerable impact on the emotional life and physiological well-being of those affected by it. As a law is a social force that can produce therapeutic and anti therapeutic results because it consists of legal rules, legal procedures, and the roles and behaviors of legal actors, like lawyers and judges, (TJ) proposes that we use the tool of the behavioral sciences to study the therapeutic and antitherapeutic impact of the law and how to improve the therapeutic functioning of the law without violating other important values, such as due process concerns. In fact, there is a considerable body of empirical evidence indicating that people tend to over-estimate the degree of personal control that others have over their behavior and tend to underestimate the importance of situational influences; “a phenomenon referred to in the behavioral science literature as the “fundamental attribution error.””Thus, (TJ) can be regarded as a theoretical foundation for problem-solving courts, especially criminal courts, juvenile, drug-treatment, teen and youth courts…etc. As an approach, as it has much to offer judges concerning how they treat the people before them, and provides insights with respect to how the courts might be structured so as to maximize their therapeutic potential. The people appearing in problem-solving courts particularly in criminal and family courts are there because they have problems that they have not recognized or had the ability to deal with effectively. They may have alcoholism, or other substance-abuse problems and they may contribute to repetitive criminality, domestic violence, or child abuse and neglect. They may be repetitive perpetrators of domestic violence or child abuse as a result of cognitive distortions concerning their relationships with their spouses or children or because they lack the social skills to manage their anger or resolve problems other than through violence. In that respect, it is should be noted that “Winick” has also used the therapeutic value of choice idea in articles arguing for reform of the criminal justice system, especially in the connection with procedures for evaluating and adjudicating competency to stand trial within that system. This approach then, seeks to transform the judiciary, to create new judicial structures and also to focus the work and behavior of the individual judge, so as to treat and prevent serious problems. As these problems are views from a public health-type perspective, the importance of using therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) principles to help people solve problems that otherwise would likely produce repeated court involvement is recognized.Accordingly, In this research paper, I expound in detail the Criminal Attempted Offences in Egyptian Criminal Law as it represents one of the most common examples of crimes in Egyptian Penal Law, hoping at the end of the research to apply the general legal principles of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) to the accused who has been convicted of committing this kind of crime not only with respect to punish the offender and impose criminal sanctions on him or her, irrespective to the sort of penalty from the legal perspective, but also focusing on rehabilitation, reform and retribution of the offender from moral and treatment perspectives. Early writers and philosophers advocated that the study of crime should emphasize individual, scientific treatment of the criminal, not the post conviction punishment. Therefore, adherents believed that the punishment should fit the criminal, not the crime. (The Positive School of Criminology, Cesare Lombroso, Leader of this School and the Father of Modern Criminology).