Disturbed Violent Offender, Final Report

• NCJ Number: 119711
• Date Published: 1989
• Author(s): H Toch; K Adams
• Length: 183 pages
• Grant Number(s): 85-IJ-CX-0044
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

Records of more than 1,300 convicted violent offenders who had been convicted and sentenced to prison in New York State in 1985 formed the basis of this detailed analysis of the connection between mental health problems and violent offenses and the accompanying presentation of an offender typology and its implications for criminal justice system responses. 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 research goal was to identify sequences of offender behavior in which the advent of criminal acts and of symptoms that are serious enough to justify diagnosis and treatment can be located in time. Thus, the analysis focused on offending careers and mental health careers. The data were analyzed using a hierarchical clustering technique and the Jaccard measure of proximity. Persons who resembled one another on crucial attributes were grouped into types. For each type the text presents a representative career description, starting with early age and culminating with the current term of imprisonment. The discussion emphasizes that the different offender types have different implications in terms of the threat they pose to society, their likelihood of recidivism or rehabilitation, their probable response to imprisonment, and other factors. It also recommends reforms in the system for dealing with mentally disturbed offenders. Footnotes, tables, and index.