The committee was set up jointly by the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Security, and given a wide remit to investigate the current law, hear the views of relevant parties, and propose reforms.
The official terms of reference, which covered England and Wales, were: (a) To consider to what extent and on what criteria the law should recognise mental disorder or abnormality in a person accused of a criminal offence as a factor affecting his liability to be tried or convicted, and his disposal; (b) To consider what, if any, changes are necessary in the powers, procedure and facilities relating to the provision of appropriate treatment, in prison, hospital or the community, for offenders suffering from mental disorder or abnormality, and to their discharge and aftercare; (c) To make recommendations.
[4] The Final Report made numerous recommendations, including for reform of the psychiatric hospital system, of forensic psychiatry, and the insanity defence.
The committee's alternative to the insanity defence, which it termed 'not guilty on evidence of mental disorder', has itself been criticised; for example for focusing largely on psychosis rather than the full range of mental disorders, and for assuming a causal link between such conditions and any particular actions of the individual (though acknowledging in theory that there might not be such a link in some particular hard to imagine case).
The committee's report said the understanding was so varied that theories about psychopathy should 'only to be understood as reference to the particular sense in which the term is employed by the psychiatrists in question".