Revocation and recidivism after high-security forensic treatment in French-speaking Belgium: social, clinical, judicial, and trajectory factors

Forensic patients discharged from high-security psychiatric hospitals require careful management during community reintegration. Post-release trajectories remain insufficiently explored in French-speaking Belgium. This retrospective longitudinal study examined revocation and recidivism among 168 individuals conditionally released between 2014 and 2018 from a high-security forensic psychiatric hospital in Wallonia. Outcomes were classified as conditional release maintained, unconditional release, or revocation. Revocation occurred in 18.5% of cases, within two years of discharge and more often in response to breaches of release conditions than to new offences. Although more than half of the patients committed at least one supervision breach, officially recorded recidivism remained low (3.0%). Compared with other groups, revoked individuals presented higher actuarial violence risk scores, more substance use disorders, more antisocial personality features, and greater number of breaches of conditional release. In contrast, individuals granted unconditional release were older, had lower violence risk scores, fewer antisocial personality features, fewer supervision breaches, and greater residential stability. Logistic regression analyses indicated that breaches of the no-reoffending condition, therapy non-adherence, and residence restriction violations were significant predictors of revocation, while more frequent supervision meetings were associated with lower odds of revocation. These findings support the interpretation of revocation as a preventive risk management mechanism within supervision framework.