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The disturbed violent offender
journal
of Criminal
All rights resewed.
Justice Vol. 20, pp. 487-488 Printed in U.S.A.
(1992) Copyright
0047-2352/92 $5.00 + .OO 01992 Pergamon Press Ltd.
BOOK REVIEWS The Disturbed Violent Offender by Hans Tech and Kenneth Adams. Yale University Press (92 A Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520), 1989, 183 pp., hardcover$22.50.
There have been few times in the last century and a half when violent crime has not been a highly emotive issue, and the topic has often been at the forefront of political debate. In more relaxed and relatively lawabiding eras, authorities have the luxury to focus on the tiny handful of extreme recidivists who appear to cause so large a part of social harm; in other times, attention shifts to the widespread culture of violence which appears to infect so many individuals, usually young males. In the last decade, debate over violence has tended to fit the latter model with extensive writing on topics such as urban gangs, the narcotics traffic, and the firearms that seem so fundamental a part of this subculture. However, there has also been some distinguished work on the hard-core violent offenders who are so heavily represented in the statistics of offenses such as robbery and aggravated assault. These individuals can be studied in many ways, and there has been great interest in exploring biomedical disorders which may contribute to their conditionfactors such as neurochemical imbalances and histories of brain injury. If such a violent hard-core could indeed be identified at an early stage of their criminal careers and somehow treated or incapacitated, this would seem to be one feasible way in which the justice system might be able to
achieve a goal that so often appears out of our reach: a significant long-term reduction of extreme violence. However, the long and unhappy record of habitual offender statutes forcibly reminds us that before we adopt any such program focusing on extremely violent offenders, we had better understand exactly what we are dealing with, and issues of definition must be at the forefront of the discussion. The Disburbed Violent Offender offers a major contribution to such pressing theoretical and policy concerns. It represents an extremely profitable collaboration between one of the best-known and most prestigious names in criminal psychology and a younger colleague with outstanding quantitative and methodological skills. It begins with a short but valuable history of the debate over the nature and etiology of disturbed violent offenders, and this immediately suggests the definitional rigor that marks the rest of the work. The authors note the many conflicts between the findings of psychiatric research and the legal assumptions implied by the insanity defense, and they discuss the difficulties in conventional methods of using simple recidivism as a measure of locating what they call “mad /bad” offenders. With these methodological issues laid out, the authors then describe the study that forms the basis of their work. They chose a sample of offenders incarcerated in the New York state prison system in the mid-1980s and matched it against the computerized client records maintained by the state Office of Mental Health. This suggested that 1,833 prisoners, or 22 percent of the sample, “had experienced some contact with the state mental health system” (31), often arising from drug or alcohol problems. This in itself is unsurprising,
487
488
Book Reviews
and in fact the proportion of “disturbed” and substance abusers might have risen sharply in the few years since the research was undertaken. However, fine-tuning soon permitted the authors to identify offenders with significant and lengthy records of mental health problems, and this sample could then be dissected at some length. The study makes many worthwhile points, but among the many worth noting here are that, for example, “offenders with mental health histories, particularly substance abuse problems, have much more extensive criminal records than other offenders” (52). Their offenses are more likely to be assaultive, with a high proportion of sexual attacks. The study documents what we might well expect from ancedotal evidence-that a few violent offenders have records of dozens of arrests for various crimes over many years, interspersed with spells of mental treatment or detoxification. Offenders are classified into various categories, including “impulsive” and “explosive” robbers and burglars, “disturbed exploders” and sex offenders, and so on. The somewhat bizarre typology may sound arcane, but it is well argued, and it should be of great interest to anyone researching the general area of violent criminality. There are especially important discussions of types of robbers, who commit the violent offense which is perhaps most threatening to the public at large, and of acts of random violence. This latter section is essential reading for future discussion of types of extreme violence such as mass and serial homicide or political assassination. There is also much of interest about sexual offenders and rapists, including those serial rapists who have attracted so much
media and law enforcement attention in the last decade. Perhaps the fundamental finding of this book concerns the overlap between mental illness and criminality. For many years, it has been common and indeed necessary to assert that the vast majority of “mental patients” cannot be stereotyped as threatening or violent, but this statement should not be taken to imply a total lack of linkage between mental illness and crime, especially violent actions. At least some “patient-offenders” do indeed demonstrate a close association between symptoms and criminal actions, and the significance of this finding for integrated policy responses is enormous. A final chapter discusses these policy issues, including means of identifying disturbed violent offenders and treating them appropriately within both the mental health and correctional settings. Though it is not central to the author’s argument, it should be said that the book represents an explosive contribution to the ongoing debate about the effects of decarcerating mental patients over recent decades and subsequent efforts to reinstitutionalize at least a portion of this population. It is difficult to read Tech and Adams without reaching one highly controversial conclusion, with which they would not necessarily agree: perhaps at least a part of the surge in criminal violence since the mid- 1960s may indeed have been connected with the policy of decarceration.
Philip Jenkins Administration of Justice Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802
of Criminal
All rights resewed.
Justice Vol. 20, pp. 487-488 Printed in U.S.A.
(1992) Copyright
0047-2352/92 $5.00 + .OO 01992 Pergamon Press Ltd.
BOOK REVIEWS The Disturbed Violent Offender by Hans Tech and Kenneth Adams. Yale University Press (92 A Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520), 1989, 183 pp., hardcover$22.50.
There have been few times in the last century and a half when violent crime has not been a highly emotive issue, and the topic has often been at the forefront of political debate. In more relaxed and relatively lawabiding eras, authorities have the luxury to focus on the tiny handful of extreme recidivists who appear to cause so large a part of social harm; in other times, attention shifts to the widespread culture of violence which appears to infect so many individuals, usually young males. In the last decade, debate over violence has tended to fit the latter model with extensive writing on topics such as urban gangs, the narcotics traffic, and the firearms that seem so fundamental a part of this subculture. However, there has also been some distinguished work on the hard-core violent offenders who are so heavily represented in the statistics of offenses such as robbery and aggravated assault. These individuals can be studied in many ways, and there has been great interest in exploring biomedical disorders which may contribute to their conditionfactors such as neurochemical imbalances and histories of brain injury. If such a violent hard-core could indeed be identified at an early stage of their criminal careers and somehow treated or incapacitated, this would seem to be one feasible way in which the justice system might be able to
achieve a goal that so often appears out of our reach: a significant long-term reduction of extreme violence. However, the long and unhappy record of habitual offender statutes forcibly reminds us that before we adopt any such program focusing on extremely violent offenders, we had better understand exactly what we are dealing with, and issues of definition must be at the forefront of the discussion. The Disburbed Violent Offender offers a major contribution to such pressing theoretical and policy concerns. It represents an extremely profitable collaboration between one of the best-known and most prestigious names in criminal psychology and a younger colleague with outstanding quantitative and methodological skills. It begins with a short but valuable history of the debate over the nature and etiology of disturbed violent offenders, and this immediately suggests the definitional rigor that marks the rest of the work. The authors note the many conflicts between the findings of psychiatric research and the legal assumptions implied by the insanity defense, and they discuss the difficulties in conventional methods of using simple recidivism as a measure of locating what they call “mad /bad” offenders. With these methodological issues laid out, the authors then describe the study that forms the basis of their work. They chose a sample of offenders incarcerated in the New York state prison system in the mid-1980s and matched it against the computerized client records maintained by the state Office of Mental Health. This suggested that 1,833 prisoners, or 22 percent of the sample, “had experienced some contact with the state mental health system” (31), often arising from drug or alcohol problems. This in itself is unsurprising,
487
488
Book Reviews
and in fact the proportion of “disturbed” and substance abusers might have risen sharply in the few years since the research was undertaken. However, fine-tuning soon permitted the authors to identify offenders with significant and lengthy records of mental health problems, and this sample could then be dissected at some length. The study makes many worthwhile points, but among the many worth noting here are that, for example, “offenders with mental health histories, particularly substance abuse problems, have much more extensive criminal records than other offenders” (52). Their offenses are more likely to be assaultive, with a high proportion of sexual attacks. The study documents what we might well expect from ancedotal evidence-that a few violent offenders have records of dozens of arrests for various crimes over many years, interspersed with spells of mental treatment or detoxification. Offenders are classified into various categories, including “impulsive” and “explosive” robbers and burglars, “disturbed exploders” and sex offenders, and so on. The somewhat bizarre typology may sound arcane, but it is well argued, and it should be of great interest to anyone researching the general area of violent criminality. There are especially important discussions of types of robbers, who commit the violent offense which is perhaps most threatening to the public at large, and of acts of random violence. This latter section is essential reading for future discussion of types of extreme violence such as mass and serial homicide or political assassination. There is also much of interest about sexual offenders and rapists, including those serial rapists who have attracted so much
media and law enforcement attention in the last decade. Perhaps the fundamental finding of this book concerns the overlap between mental illness and criminality. For many years, it has been common and indeed necessary to assert that the vast majority of “mental patients” cannot be stereotyped as threatening or violent, but this statement should not be taken to imply a total lack of linkage between mental illness and crime, especially violent actions. At least some “patient-offenders” do indeed demonstrate a close association between symptoms and criminal actions, and the significance of this finding for integrated policy responses is enormous. A final chapter discusses these policy issues, including means of identifying disturbed violent offenders and treating them appropriately within both the mental health and correctional settings. Though it is not central to the author’s argument, it should be said that the book represents an explosive contribution to the ongoing debate about the effects of decarcerating mental patients over recent decades and subsequent efforts to reinstitutionalize at least a portion of this population. It is difficult to read Tech and Adams without reaching one highly controversial conclusion, with which they would not necessarily agree: perhaps at least a part of the surge in criminal violence since the mid- 1960s may indeed have been connected with the policy of decarceration.
Philip Jenkins Administration of Justice Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802