The criminality of the mentally ill: a dangerous misconception.
A longstanding controversy is the relative dangerousness and criminality of the mentally ill. The author presents observational data from 1,072 police-citizen encounters in an urban area. The data show that persons exhibiting signs of serious mental disorder were not suspected of serious crimes at a rate disproportionate to their numbers in the population. The patterns of crime for mentally disordered persons and for non-mentally-disordered persons were substantially similar. These data help dispel the myth that the mentally ill constitute a dangerous group prone to violent crime.
D003415:Crime; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D003688:Deinstitutionalization; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012926:Social Control, Formal; D013240:Stereotyping; D014505:Urban Population