NCJ Number
147517
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 84 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1993) Pages: 352-376
Date Published
1993
Length
25 pages
Annotation
A discussion of the results of a study concerning defendants with psychiatric impairment is provided.
Abstract
This article presents the findings of a study based on data from Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, from the period 1981- 1985, designed to estimate the proportion of individuals in a given criminal defendant population who also were treated for psychiatric impairment. Two independent random samples, one felony and one misdemeanor, were drawn from criminal cases filed during this time period. The resulting sample pool consisted of 4,921 unique felony defendants and 5,411 unique misdemeanor defendants. The study explores three important features of the subpopulation that is subjected to control by the criminal justice and public mental health systems: the prevalence question--what proportion of the criminal defendant population are also public psychiatric patients? The probability question--is the size of the psychiatrically impaired criminal defendant population larger than expected? And the rate question--does the psychiatrically impaired criminal defendant population account for a disproportionately large share of criminal cases? An examination of the size of the intersection of the criminal defendant population and the psychiatric patient population reveals that the intersection is small: less than 10 percent of the criminal defendants who were charged with a felony, a misdemeanor, or both in the space of 5 years received psychiatric treatment at the public mental health facility during the same 5-year period. Despite the small size of the defendant-patient subpopulation, it is nearly four times as large as it would be if the two phenomena were independent. Moreover, findings from this study also indicate that defendants with mental disorder have higher per capita rates of being charged with crime than do other defendants. The author urges further study to 1) examine the behavior that led to the charge to determine whether defendant-patients behave in a manner that is typical of, or different from, other defendants; 2) determine whether defendant-patients are charged with offenses that are similar to or different from the offenses charged against other defendants who exhibit the same kind of behavior in the same context; and 3) to examine the temporal proximity and sequential order of the mental health problem to the criminal conduct, the nature of the psychiatric disorder in light of the nature of the crime, and the nature and severity of the psychiatric disorder in terms of improperly developed, diminished or impaired free will. Selected other studies also are discussed. 3 tables