Prevalence of criminal thinking among state prison inmates with serious mental illness

Abstract

To examine the prevalence of criminal thinking in mentally disordered offenders, incarcerated male (n = 265) and female (n = 149) offenders completed measures of psychiatric functioning and criminal thinking. Results indicated 92% of the participants were diagnosed with a serious mental illness, and mentally disordered offenders produced criminal thinking scores on the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) and Criminal Sentiments Scale-Modified (CSS-M) similar to that of non-mentally ill offenders. Collectively, results indicated the clinical presentation of mentally disordered offenders is similar to that of psychiatric patients and criminals. Implications are discussed with specific focus on the need for mental health professionals to treat co-occurring issues of mental illness and criminality in correctional mental health treatment programs.

Fig. 1

Comparison of mentally ill inmate’s MCMI-III scores with a psychiatric inpatient sample from Schoenberg et al. (2006)

Fig. 2

Comparison of mentally ill male inmate’s PICTS scales with two samples of non-mentally ill male prison samples from Walters (1995) and Walters and Geyer (2005), respectively

Fig. 3

Comparison of CSS-M scale scores for male and female offenders with mental illness with a non-mentally ill offender sample (Simourd & Olver, 2002)