A longstanding controversy is the relative dangerousness and criminality
of the mentally ill. The author presents observational data from 1,072
police-citizen encounters in an urban area. The data show that persons
exhibiting signs of serious mental disorder were not suspected of serious
crimes at a rate disproportionate to their numbers in the population. The
patterns of crime for mentally disordered persons and for
non-mentally-disordered persons were substantially similar. These data help
dispel the myth that the mentally ill constitute a dangerous group prone to
violent crime.
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