Criminality and Violence among the Mentally Disordered: The Stockholm Metropolitan Project

by Sheilagh Hodgins , Carl-Gunnar Janson

• ISBN13: 9780521580731
• ISBN10: 0521580730
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In recent years it has become apparent that mentally ill people are at increased risk of committing crimes of violence. Most writing and research about crime and mental disorder has focused necessarily on the immediate problems which confront clinicians and law makers - assessing and managing the future risk of violence. In this important new book the authors attempt to step back from these immediate preoccupations and describe the criminality of the mentally ill and try to identify the complex chain of factors which cause it. As part of their analysis they examine a unique cohort composed of 15,117 persons born in Stockholm who were studied from pregnancy to the age of thirty. While they conclude that we still do not understand exactly how and why persons with major mental disorders commit crimes, their findings make a valuable contribution to ongoing debates on mental health and criminal justice policy and practice.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vi
List of tables	vii
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(5)
Research on the criminality and violence of the mentally ill	6	(23)
The longitudinal approach	29	(24)
Swedish society and Stockholm: the cohort and its context	53	(24)
Criminality	77	(31)
Explanations of the criminality of the mentally ill	108	(33)
Early and late-starters (with Micheline Lapalme and Lars Bergman)	141	(39)
Conclusion	180	(19)
References	199	(23)
Index	222