Teplin, L.A. (1985). The criminality of the mentally ill: A dangerous misconception. American Journal of Psychiatry, 142(5), 593-599. Summary: There has been a long controversy, on how dangerousness and criminality is relative to the mentally ill. The author gathered observational data from 1,072 police citizens who encounters in an urban area. The data from the article shows that a person who shows signs of having a mental disorder is not suspected of doing serious crimes and therefore individuals who are diagnosed with a mental disorder vs. those who do not have a mental disorder have similar patterns of crime.
Research Question: Whether the stereotype of the mentally ill as dangerous and, therefore, more prone to commit crime is warranted?
Data: The data used in this report were part of a more larger research scale that examined police handling of the mental ill. Observations were conducted during all hours of the day, with police activity in order to observe what happen firsthand with a mentally disordered person. More than 1 million were observed for 2,200 hours over a 14-month period during 1980-1981. There were 283 random selected officers that were included. “The presence of mental disorder was ascertained by fieldworkers use of a symptom checklist: …show more content…
These individuals were identified from a random sample of 313 patients as meeting the study's diagnostic inclusion criteria. Patients were classified according to the most violent crime for which they were arrested prior to hospitalization Of the 172 study subjects, 63.5% had no prior criminal history, 3% had committed only non-violent crimes, 6.5% had committed crimes against property, and 27% had committed crimes of violence.”(Grossman, Haywood, Cavanaugh, Davis, Lewis,