Reflections on the Sociodemographic and Medicolegal Profiles of Female Criminal Defendants

This article describes the sociodemographic and medicolegal characteristics of 222 female criminal defendants ref erred by the courts to a forensic psychiatric service over a 10-year period. The typical female criminal defendant was young, poorly educated, occupationally disadvantaged, unmamed, and from a broken home. Three Axis I diagnoses (schizophrenia, major affective disorder, and psychoactive substance use disorder) accounted for 55% of the psychopathology, whereas antisocial personality and borderline personality disorders accounted for 16% of personality disorders among the group. The most common charge was that of property offenses.