Crimes of Violence by Mentally Abnormal Offenders: A psychiatric and epidemiological study in the Federal German Republic

by H. Häfner , W. Boker , In collaboration with H. Immich , C. Kohler , A. Schmitt , G. Wagner , J. Werner , Foreword by T. C. N. Gibbens , Translated by Helen Marshall

• ISBN13: 9780521107068
• ISBN10: 0521107067
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Originally published in German in 1973, and first published in English as this Cambridge edition in 1982, this is a detailed and systematic account of the extent to which mentally abnormal offenders are likely to commit crimes of major violence, based upon a study of all the 533 men and women in the Federal German Republic from 1955 to 1964 who were detained in hospitals after committing homicide or near-homicide. The authors calculated that such patients are no more, but also no less, dangerous than the rest of the population, and that the policy of treating psychotic or seriously subnormal patients in the community does not expose the public to risk. The book makes important suggestions for the prevention of such disasters by describing the diagnoses, special symptoms and social situations which involve a special risk, especially to close relatives and those with whom the patient is emotionally involved.

Table of Contents

List of authors and collaborators

Foreword

Preface

Note on the translation

Introduction: the problem viewed in the light of the psychiatric literature

Previous studies of violence in the mentally abnormal

Questions posed, population studied, methodology

Results I: general data

Results II: overall comparisons of sex, age and diagnosis

Results III: comparative risk of violence in the mentally abnormal and in the control population

Results IV: personality, illness and background of the crime-patient comparisons

Results V: the crime and the victim

Results VI: qualitative analysis of small diagnostic groups

Summary and discussion

Appendix: data sheets

Bibliography

Notes

Name index

Subject index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.