Am J Psychiatry 1982; 139:892-897
Copyright © 1982 by American Psychiatric Association
Detention and rearrest rates of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity and convicted felons
RA Pasewark, ML Pantle and HJ Steadman
The authors compared 42 men and 8 women who had been found not guilty by
reason of insanity with a group of subjects who had been convicted of a
felony (matched in criminal offenses, age, education, marital status,
previous arrests, and sex). They found that the acquitted subjects spent
significantly less time in the hospital than the matched subjects spent in
prison. They also found that about the same number of acquitted subjects
who had been released from the hospital were rearrested as were control
subjects who had been released from prison. Many more acquitted subjects
were rehospitalized than were released control subjects. There appears to
have been a change in detention patterns after a switch to the American Law
Institute rule and a greater role for the Department of Mental Hygiene in
acquittees' hospitalizations.
