Aleem Ashraf

Department of Psychology

University of Sindh,

Pakistan.

1. Defining mental illness

2. Disorders associated with crime

3. Competency and criminal responsibility

4. Mental disorder and violence

5. Mentally disordered in prisons

6. Risk factors for violence

7. References

Aleem Ashraf

• Disorder of mind that interferes substantially with a person’s ability to cope with life on a daily basis.

• Deprives the person of freedom of choice with varying degrees.

• Disorders most relevant to crime are ▫ Schizophrenia▫ Delusional Disorders▫ Major Depressive Disorder▫ Antisocial Personality Disorder

Aleem Ashraf

• Symptoms: severe breakdowns in thought patterns, emotions, and perceptions, social withdrawal, loses contact with reality etc.

• Schizophrenics don’t often commit crime but when they do, the level of violence is stronger than normal violent offender.

• Delusions, particularly persecutory ones, are particularly common in those schizophrenics who commit violent offenses.

Aleem Ashraf

• Characterized by the presence of one or more non-bizarre delusions.

• In delusional disorder, the delusions are reasonably believable and not completely far-fetched as they are in schizophrenia.

• Anger, resentment, and sometimes violence accompany these false persecutory beliefs.

Aleem Ashraf

• Symptoms include: an extremely depressed mood accompanied by slowing down of mental and physical activity, gloom, despair, feelings of worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide.

• Depression may be strongly associated with delinquency specially among teenage girls.

• They don’t care what happens to them, which may increase the likelihood of gravitating toward delinquency.

Aleem Ashraf

• Depression also plays a significant role in mass murders, school shootings, workplace violence, and “suicide-by-cop” incidents in which a person sets up a situation wherein police are essentially forced to shoot.

Aleem Ashraf

• The essential feature: rights of others are violated.

• The individual must be at least 18 years of age and must have a history of some symptoms of conduct disorder before age 15.

• APD is a common diagnosis of criminal defendants and offenders.

• Henn and colleagues (1976) found that 40% out of 1,195 criminal defendants referred to their psychiatric facility had APD.

Aleem Ashraf

• In correctional facilities, rates of inmates considered APD range from 30 percent to 50 percent.

• Some jurisdictions specifically exclude it from the list of mental disorders that can support an insanity defense.

Aleem Ashraf

• The above psychiatric diagnoses are considered when decisions are made whether mentally disordered defendants are competent to stand trial or, if so, are culpable enough to be held responsible for their crimes.

Aleem Ashraf

• Defendants are competent to stand trial if they have “sufficient present ability to consult with their lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.

• The law states that a person who is incompetent must not be tried.

• 1 in 15 defendants are evaluated each year by state and federal courts for their competency to stand trial.

Aleem Ashraf

• About 4 out of every 5 of these evaluated defendants are found competent.

• If found incompetent to stand trial, defendant is typically sent to a mental institution until rendered competent.

• Cases of those ISTs who have no hope of gaining competency are dismissed if their charges are minor.

• The prosecutor still retains the option of charges if the person regains competency at some later time.

Aleem Ashraf

• Pirellie et al. found that defendants with psychotic disorders were about eight times more likely to be found incompetent.

• They also found that defendants who were unemployed or had previous psychiatric hospitalizations were about twice as likely to be found incompetent.

Aleem Ashraf

• Insanity is a legal term which refers to a person’s state of mind at the time an offense was committed.

• If someone is found insane, it means he was so mentally disordered at the time of an offense to be held responsible.

• He is sent to a psychiatric facility instead of prison.

Aleem Ashraf

• Cochrane et al. found that federal defendants with diagnoses of psychotic disorders, affective disorders, and mental retardation had higher rates of release than those diagnosed with other disorders.

• Personality disorders were negatively correlated with a finding of insanity.

• Today’s jurors prefer neurological evidence, particularly evidence of traumatic brain injury.

Aleem Ashraf

• Successful NGRI defendants tended to be older, female, better educated, single and had a history of prior hospitalization.

Aleem Ashraf

• When the possible penalty is capital punishment or life imprisonment without parole.

• Insanity holders are immediately confined to a mental institution.

• NGRI on average spent at least as much time in mental institutions or treatment facilities as they would have spent in prison if convicted.

Aleem Ashraf

• Posttraumatic stress Disorder

▫ PTSD has been used to support a defense of NGRI, in both violent and nonviolent cases.

▫ Using PTSD to support an insanity defense is not likely to be successful.

▫ It usually results in a finding of diminished responsibility, rather than the complete absolution of responsibility.

▫ Previously there have been no objective ways of assessing PTSD.

Aleem Ashraf

• Posttraumatic stress Disorder

▫ Recently Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) has been referred to as the “gold standard” for assessing the disorder.

• Amnesia

▫ Amnesia refers to complete or partial memory loss of an event or a series of events.

▫ The courts have not been receptive to amnesia as a valid condition in both the insanity defense and incompetence to stand trial.

Aleem Ashraf

• Amnesia

▫ The exception is in cases of brain injury, when a connection can be established between the injury and the memory loss.

▫ The courts have not been sympathetic to defendants who rely on excuses based on alcohol or other drug intoxication to prove their Amnesia.

Aleem Ashraf

1. Past mental disorder alone, even serious mental disorder, is not a good predictor of violence.

2. The mental disorder most closely associated with violent and serious offenses is schizophrenia.

3. Males who have developed schizophrenia and who score high on the PCL-R have an increased risk of being violent.

Aleem Ashraf

4. Males who develop schizophrenia and exhibit antisocial behavior at an early age often demonstrate persistent and versatile patterns of criminal offending.

5. Violence is associated with current serious mental disorder, particularly when a history of violent behavior is also present.

6. MacArthur Research Network classification system is an efficient predictor of future violence in the community.

Aleem Ashraf

6. Despite the researchers’ attempts to predict violence, no one factor is found to predict violent behavior.

Aleem Ashraf

• The percentage of mentally disordered inmates in American prisons is increasing.

• 10–15 percent of persons in jails and federal and state prisons have severe mental disorders.

Aleem Ashraf

• Debate between the respective merits of statistically based assessment of risk versus the more subjective, clinically based methods goes on.

• Statistical measures offer a compilation of risk or needs factors on which the individual is evaluated (e.g., past violence, age, criminal record, early onset of antisocial behavior).

• Actuarial instruments have consistently outperformed clinical judgments.

Aleem Ashraf

• Research on the reliability and validity of these instruments is ongoing.

• Many mental health practitioners have been reluctant to yield their professional judgments to actuarial models.

• A separate category of measures based on structured clinical judgment (SPI) was developed.

Aleem Ashraf

Bartol, C. (2012). Criminal Behavior: A Psychological Approach (10th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Aleem Ashraf