Abstract
Little attention has been paid to the processing of insanity acquittees subsequent to criminal trial. This study first obtained descriptive data on new insanity acquittees (N = 137) in Illinois between January 1982 and July 1984 and then examined the criminal commitment criteria used by evaluating psychiatrists and criminal courts in the disposition of insanity acquittees. Acquittees in Illinois were largely male, chronic schizophrenics who had been acquitted for murder or attempted murder. Judges tended to use criminal criteria that were more demanding than those which had been recommended by psychiatrists. Stepwise discriminant analyses revealed that psychiatric diagnosis was the most influential factor in determining psychiatrists’ recommendations and court dispositions. Psychiatrists and committing judges failed to comply with the requirements of the committment law in one quarter of the cases.
Footnotes
-
Drs. Wettstein and Mulvey are affiliated with the Law & Psychiatry Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, 3811 O’Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
-
This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 1985.
- Copyright © 1988, The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
