The Fate of Psychotic Offenders Returned for Trial
A. LOUIS MCGARRY M.D.1
1 Lecturer in Psychiatry, Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 58 Fenwood Rd., Boston, Mass. 02115, and State Director of Legal Medicine, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health
In a long-term follow-up study in Massachusetts, the author found that most defendants who have been committed as incompetent to stand trial can probably be returned to the courts soon after their hospitalization; that it is in their best interest, unless their charges can be otherwise disposed of, to stand trial as quickly as possible; and that the risk to society posed by their release is no greater, and possibly less, than that of other groups of offenders.
