Mental Disorder and Violent Crime: A 20-Year Cohort Study; Final Report

• NCJ Number: 136199
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 65 pages
• Grant Number(s): 88-IJ-CX-0039
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Survey

Annotation

This study compares long-term patterns of crime for mentally disordered patients and for prison inmates who were institutionalized at the same time in New York State. Data set archived by the NIJ Data Resources Program at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, located at URL http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/nacjd.

Abstract

The study compared subsequent crime and violence across four groups: prisoners with no mental health history, prisoners with a mental health history, patients with a prior arrest history, and patients with no prior arrests. The hypothesis tested was that both prisoner groups and patients with prior arrests would have higher arrests than mental patients with no prior arrests. The secondary interest of the study was to assess the predictive value of a diagnosis of schizophrenia in patients, controlling for arrest history to evaluate the impact of diagnosis. To assess the stability of the results over time, information on patients was collected from two time periods a decade apart; their arrest records were traced for 11 years. This research supplemented an existing data base to provide a 20-year followup of the two 1968 admission cohorts and a 10-year followup of the two 1978 admission cohorts. Findings indicate that prisoners with or without prior mental hospitalizations were the most prone to subsequent arrest, and patients with no prior arrest histories were the least likely to exhibit such behavior. Patients with schizophrenia were more likely to be violent than the nonschizophrenics. Previous study reports with data are included with the final report. References, tabular data, and forms.