The extent and pattern of crime amongst mentally handicapped offenders

SUMMARY Apart from certain types of minor sexual offences, and to a lesser extent the offence of arson, there is no particular relationship between crime and mental handicap. However, the law allows courts to make mentally disordered offenders — including the mentally handicapped — subject to hospital or guardianship orders, the latter having been used very rarely. The present study presents the results of a 15 year follow‐up of a large group of mentally handicapped offenders who were given hospital orders in 1963–64. The majority of these people re‐offended after discharge from hospital, but very few (3–4 per cent) committed dangerous or violent offences. The pattern of their offending largely resembles a “normal” criminal picture. Most were first convicted in their teens or early twenties, usually for larceny offences. However, there was a disproportionate number of sex offenders in the male group and a small number of women accounted for an abnormally high proportion of the offences committed. The total extent of the criminal careers of the mentally handicapped group was similar to that of the mentally ill, but the pattern of offending and the fundamental relationship between type of mental disorder and crime differed between the two. Both groups differed significantly from the psychopathically disordered group of offenders/patients. It is suggested that any new legislation should take account of these differences and should make separate provision for the ill and the handicapped, at least in so far as the simple (Section 60) hospital is concerned