Federal Abortion Policy and Politics: 1973-1996 Why is Abortion Such a Controversial issue in the United States Barriers to Access to Abortion Services The Impact of Anti-abortion Activities on Women Seeking Abortions Black Women and the Question of Abortion Latinos and Abortion Abortion and Asian Pacific Islander Americans The Acceptability of Medical Abortion to Women Understanding the Relationship of Violence Against Women to Unwanted Pregnancy and it's Resolution Testing a Model of the Psychological Consequences of Abortion Men and Abortion: The Gender Politics of Pregnancy Resolution Abortion Among Adolescents A Cognitive Approach to Patient-Centered Abortion Care Abortion Issues in Psychotherapy Bringing Lessons Learned to the United States Improving Access to Abortion Services Abortion Practice, Policy, and Research: Recommendations for the 21st Century

Violent offenders: Appraising and managing risk.

Background: There are little epidemiologic data on psychiatric disorders of women in jails. Accurate data on female jail detainees are critical because of their increasing numbers and their unique treatment needs. Methods: Using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule, independent interviewers assessed a randomly selected, stratified sample of 1272 female jail detainees awaiting trial in Chicago, Ill. We tabulated lifetime and 6-month prevalence rates of disorders by race or ethnicity (African American, non-Hispanic white, Hispanic), age, and education and compared the jail rates with general population rates for women in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area program. We also examined whether or not psychiatric disorder was associated with the severity of the detainee's current arrest charges. Results: Over 80% of the sample met criteria for one or more lifetime psychiatric disorders; 70% were symptomatic within 6 months of the interview. The most common disorders were drug abuse or dependence, alcohol abuse or dependence, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Major depressive episode was the most prevalent major mental disorder. Rates were generally highest among non-Hispanic whites and among older detainees. Rates for all disorders were significantly higher than general population rates, except for schizophrenia. Most detainees with psychiatric disorders were arrested for nonviolent crimes. Conclusion: These results suggest substantial psychiatric morbidity among female jail detainees.

Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders Among Incarcerated Women: I. Pretrial Jail Detainees

Violent offenders: Appraising and managing risk, 2nd ed.

Studies have demonstrated that police often arrest the mentally ill when treatment alternatives would be preferable but are unavailable. Thus, jails may contain disproportionate numbers of severely mentally ill persons who have co-occurring disorders. Data on the co-occurrence of severe mental disorder, substance abuse, and antisocial personality disorders were gathered from 728 randomly selected male urban jail detainees. Using difference of proportions tests and loglinear analysis, the authors demonstrated that most subjects with a severe mental disorder (schizophrenia or a major affective disorder) also meet criteria for a substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. These findings suggest several changes in public policy regarding health care delivery in correctional settings and for the general population.

Co-occurring disorders among mentally ill jail detainees. Implications for public policy.

Risk thinking has become central to the practice of contemporary psychiatry. In forensic psychiatry there has been a widespread shift away from notions of dangerousness towards the assessment and management of risk. In psychiatric practice more generally the assessment prediction, management of risk has become central to the new logics of ‘community psychiatry’. New statistical techniques for making risk quantifiable and calculable are being devised, in particular in North America. On the. one hand, risk thinking seeks to bring the future to the present and make it manageable. On the other, ideas of the unmanageable and incorrigible riskiness of certain monstrous individuals transfixes much public debate on psychiatry in a ‘post‐carceral’ era, and leads to new demands for preventative detention. Risk thinking thus transforms the role of mental hearth professionals, the nature of their work, and their place in regimes of control. Psychiatric prefessionals now collaborate with a range of other mental health...

Governing risky individuals: The role of psychiatry in new regimes of control

Persons believed both to be mentally ill and to have committed criminal behavior"mentally disordered offenders"' are enmeshed in a Byzantine pattern of relationships between mental health and correctional agencies, such that they often receive the worst that both systems have to offer (Kittrie, 1971; Wexler, 1976). As well, they confront forensic psychiatry and psychology with ethical dilemmas that defy easy resolution (Roth, 1980) and with demands for levels of predictive accuracy and treatment efficacy that appear to exceed the state of the mental health sciences in the present or foreseeable future (Steadman, 1980; Monahan, 1981). A confluence of several factors has served to highlight the salience of mentally disordered offenders to mental health and criminal justice agencies in recent years.

Mentally disordered offenders: A national survey of patients and facilities.

A National Survey of Patients and Facilities

“Sex,” Havelock Ellis (1936) once wrote, “is the central problem of life.” While it may not be the central problem, it is surely a major problem of law as well. Since Michigan enacted the first “sex psychopath” statute in 1937, the diversion from the criminal justice system to the mental health system of those who have committed a sexual offense and are believed to be mentally disordered has been fraught with controversy. Conservatives have charged that the indeterminate confinement that accompanies such diversion results in offenders being released “too soon,” while liberals have argued that it results in a confinement that is “too long.” A recent legislative hearing in California, the state with the largest program for mentally disordered sex offenders (MDSOs), heard a staff psychiatrist at an MDSO facility testify that “What I feel quite often is this guy ought to be in the slammer.” When a legislator stated that “any sex offender is mentally messed up, so let’s lock the SOBs up and get on with the business of the people of California,” the hearing room resounded in applause (Luther, 1981, p. 22).1 When the Wisconsin legislature considered whether to abolish that state’s Sex Crimes Act in 1979 not a single witness could be found to defend the statute. The repeal was passed unanimously by both houses of the legislature and promptly signed by the governor (Ransley, 1980).

Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders

It is becoming commonplace for the United States Supreme Court to cite social science research when it decides cases of relevance to the criminal justice (Ballew v. Georgia)1 or mental health systems (Addington v. Texas).2 Against this background, the first thing to strike a social scientist in the Vitek 3 prison-to-mental hospital transfer case is that the Court cited not a single piece of psychological or sociological data. This lack of attention to research on “social facts” (Saks, 1980) regarding prisoners who are transferred to mental hospitals bespeaks no general retreat by the Court from the incorporation of social science in judicial decisions. Rather, the more probable explanation is that the justices and their clerks simply could find no relevant empirical data on which to rely. Indeed, in our extensive search for material for this chapter, we have found very few studies directed explicitly at the topic of prison-to-mental hospital transfer. We shall, therefore, consider in some detail the results of our own recent national survey (see Introduction), as well as an in depth interim study of transfer procedures in six states.

Prisoners Transferred to Mental Hospitals

A general fear of crime victimization led to modified activities in the community and feelings of relative safety in their own area for 132 elderly respondents on a 24-item questionnaire. They held sympathetic views of crime perpetrators as disadvantaged victims of society themselves, but came to the unlikely conclusions that more police control and harsher prison sentences are needed.

Sharon Kantorowski Davis

Papers

Mentally disordered offenders: A national survey of patients and facilities.

A National Survey of Patients and Facilities

Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders

Prisoners Transferred to Mental Hospitals

Perceptions by the aged of crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system.