NCJ Number
134330
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 82 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1991) Pages: 334-359
Date Published
1991
Length
26 pages
Annotation
An attempt is made to specify criminalization in practical terms using data pertaining to a sample of 1,068 defendants with a record of admission to the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex and 1,116 nonpsychiatric defendants and associated criminal cases stemming from criminal misdemeanor charges filed between January 1, 1981 and December 30, 1985 in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Circuit Court.
Abstract
The data fail to provide any evidence of wholesale subversion of the criminal process to accomplish psychiatric treatment goals, even in the case of defendants evaluated and/or committed for incompetency. Only 24 percent of defendants with psychiatric records had any kind of psychiatric evaluation or treatment imposed on them. Of defendants evaluated for incompetency, only about half were found incompetent, and the vast majority of those initially evaluated as incompetent subsequently were determined to have regained competency. As a group, those with psychiatric records were criminally sanctioned more severely than defendants without psychiatric records, and defendants with relatively extensive psychiatric records were sanctioned even more severely. The empirically grounded specification of "criminalization" emerged as relatively greater punitiveness. 56 notes and 3 tables