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Mentally Disordered Offenders' Accounts of Their Crimes

Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

KELLY S. REID

Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

LANA E. STERMAC

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto

Sixty male offenders newly admitted to a secure psychiatric setting made a variety of attributional ratings concerning their own offense and the offenses of eight other offenders. A nonoffender control subject was yoked to each offender by being given the latter's history and offense description to explain and rate. In addition, control subjects evaluated the eight standard history and offense descriptions. There were no differences in the ratings of the standard crime and history descriptions between offenders and their yoked controls, except that offenders rated the causes of other offenders' crimes as less stable and others' likelihood of reoffending as lower than did nonoffenders. As predicted, personality-disordered stimulus offenders were rated as more blameworthy, more likely to reoffend, and more responsible for their crimes than psychotic stimulus offenders. Offenders rated themselves as less likely to reoffend than their yoked controls rated them.

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