Mentally Disordered Offenders

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Incompetency to Stand Trial

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Incompetency to Stand Trial

      • Bruce J. Winick

      Pages 3-38

   3. Defendants Incompetent to Stand Trial

      • Henry J. Steadman, Eliot Hartstone

      Pages 39-62

3. Acquittal by Reason of Insanity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63

      PDF

   2. Acquittal by Reason of Insanity

      • Grant Morris

      Pages 65-108

   3. Defendants Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

      • Henry J. Steadman, Jeraldine Braff

      Pages 109-129

4. Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131

      PDF

   2. Special Dispositional Alternatives for Abnormal Offenders

      • George E. Dix

      Pages 133-190

   3. Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders

      • John Monahan, Sharon Kantorowski Davis

      Pages 191-204

5. Prison-Mental Hospital Transfers

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 205-205

      PDF

   2. The Transfer of Inmates to Mental Health Facilities

      • Michael J. Churgin

      Pages 207-232

   3. Prisoners Transferred to Mental Hospitals

      • John Monahan, Sharon Kantorowski Davis, Eliot Hartstone, Henry J. Steadman

      Pages 233-244

6. A Compendium of United States Statutes on Mentally Disordered Offenders

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 225-225

      PDF

   2. Mental Disability in the American Criminal Process

      • Robert J. Favole

      Pages 247-295

7. Back Matter

   Pages 297-302

   PDF

In its narrowest sense, "mentally disordered offender" refers to the approximately twenty thousand persons per year in the United States who are institutionalized as not guilty by reason of insanity, incompetent to stand trial, and mentally disordered sex offenders, as well as those prisoners transferred to mental hospitals. The real importance of mentally disordered offenders, however, may not lie in this figure. Rather, it may reside in the symbolic role that mentally disordered offenders play for the rest of the legal system. The 3,140 persons residing in state institutions on an average day in 1978 as not guilty by reason of insanity (see Chapter 4), for example, are surely worthy of concern in their own right. But they represent only 1% of the 307,276 persons residing in state and federal prisons in the same period (U. S. Dept. of Justice, 1981). From a purely numeric point of view, the insanity defense truly is "much ado about little" (Pasewark & Pasewark, 1982). The central importance of understanding these persons, however, is that they serve a symbolic function in justifying the imprisonment of the other 99%. The insanity defense, as Stone (1975) has noted, is "the exception that proves the rule. " By exculpating a relatively few people from being criminally responsible for their behavior, the law inculpates all other law violators as liable for social sanction.

• Mental Health
• behavior
• development
• health
• hospital
• state

• School of Law, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

  John Monahan

• Special Projects Research Unit, New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, Albany, USA

  Henry J. Steadman

Policies and ethics