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Abstract Background This paper describes re‐offending in all 234 patients who were discharged from a medium secure unit between October 1980 and October 1994, after a first admission. Method Data were collected from hospital records and the Offenders Index. Results A total of 24% of patients had at least one conviction, including 12% who were convicted of a serious offence. These figures are an underestimate of the true rate of re‐offending as many patients spent a large proportion of the follow‐up period in an institution, which reduced the opportunities for further offending. With this reservation in mind, and allowing for methodological differences, the rates are broadly comparable to those emerging from other follow‐up studies of forensic psychiatric patients. They are much lower than recidivism rates for ordinary prisoners. Discussion It is argued that re‐offending rates per se are of little value in measuring outcome in forensic psychiatric populations. There is a need to develop health‐based outcome measures, which should include the occurrence of violence or other offensive behaviour, without reliance on the need for a criminal conviction. Copyright © 1999 Whurr Publishers Ltd.
Friendship et al. (1999) studied this question.