Therése Fridström Montoya has been awarded funding for a three-year project
Therése Fridström Montoya Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
The Sävstaholm Foundation has awarded funding for a three-year research project entitled ‘People with intellectual disabilities as defendants and victims – a blind spot in criminal law’. Claes Lernestedt, Professor of Criminal Law (Södertörn University), will lead the project, which is being carried out in collaboration with Therése Fridström Montoya, Associate Professor of Civil Law and Doctor of Laws in Public Law (Uppsala University).
People with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable to certain types of crime, but are also, for example, at risk of being recruited to commit serious crimes. The aim of the project is to highlight the consequences that current criminal law regulations and judicial practice have for these individuals in their roles as both defendants and victims. The overarching question for the project is how the criminal law’s ‘blindness’ to this group’s particular vulnerability is justified, and whether, and if so how, this could be addressed differently – without jeopardising (other) important values within criminal law.