Recidivism among Male Insanity Acquittees

Abstract

Although there have been studies of the relative criminal recidivism rates of insanity acquittees and of those of persons found guilty of similar offenses, little is known about whether the same factors are related to recidivism in both groups. In the present study, we compared the general and violent recidivism rates of insanity acquittees and convicted men who had been assessed in a maximum security psychiatric hospital prior to their trials. The groups were matched on age, offense and criminal history. Recidivism for the convicted group was found to be higher than for the insanity acquittees. Similar to the findings for the convicted men, subject characteristics that reflected past criminal and antisocial behavior were more closely related to outcome for the insanity acquittees than were clinical variables. Furthermore, multiple discriminant equations to predict recidivism were constructed for each group separately, and they performed well on cross-validations using the other group. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for policy and treatment planning for mentally disordered offenders.