Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

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NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998 Gorm Gabrielsen, Lecturer Department of Management Science and Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Julius Thomsens Plads 10 DK-1925 Frederiksberg C e-mail: stgg@cbs.dk and Peter Kramp, Head of Clinic of Forensic Psychiatry, Ministry of Justice Slotsholmsgade 10 DK-1216 København K 170 The increasing number of forensic psychiatric patients in Denmark, 1980-96 Causes and perspectives The number of forensic patients in Denmark has increased dramatically during the last 15 years from 300 in 1980 to about 1000 today. In this presentation we shall try to explain why forensic psychiatry has become an exploding business. Section 16 of the Danish penal code states, that “Persons who at the time of the act, were irresponsible owing to mental illness or similar conditions or a pronounced mental deficiency, are not punishable”. The term “mental illness” is equivalent to the psychiatric term “psychosis”. Section 68 establishes, that measures other than punishment can be used against psychotic offenders, namely 1: placement in a psychiatric hospital, which means, that the offender cannot be discharged before a new court order. 2: Psychiatric treatment, where the offender is admitted to a psychiatric hospital or department, and it is then for the psychiatrist to discharge and if necessary - together with the probation office - readmit the patient. 3: Outpatient treatment. Section 69 of the penal code establishes, that psychiatric treatment sanctions can be used instead of punishment to non-psychotic but otherwise mentally abnormal offenders. Denmark, a small country with about 5 millions inhabitants, is administratively divided into 15 counties. Each county is responsible for the total health-service to the inhabitants of the county including the forensic patients. All forensic patients are thus treated within the ordinary psychiatric treatment-system. In principal the forensic patients are looked upon as all other psychiatric patients. Some counties have special wards for some of these patients, but in several counties they are treated at ordinary wards together with non-criminal patients. The forensic patients are not registered in any special way by the counties, and consequently the authorities responsible for the treatment, do no know the numbers - perhaps do not want to know the numbers . However, almost all the forensic patients with a sanction of “psychiatric treatment” and “outpatient treatment” are under supervision by the Department of Prison and Probation too, Kramp and Gabrielsen, 1994. Patients with a “placement order”, who cannot be discharged, of course do not need a probation officer.The Department of Prison and
NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998 Probation has offices in every county, and with some minor unimportant exceptions, is the area served by the local office identical with the county. Each office reports monthly to the Department the number and type of clients under supervision - those with suspect sentences, prisoners released on parole, forensic patients and so on. In this way it is possible to count the number of forensic patients in each county month by month, i.e. the monthly prevalence of forensic patients in each county. This registration has taken place since 1977, and for the present analysis the material from 1980 is used to follow the development in prevalence of forensic patients. Patients with a placement order, most of them suffer from schizophrenia and have committed serious violent crime are not under supervision and therefore are not included in the present material. The number, however, is limited, around 80,(Lund,1997), which means that our figures are minimum figures covering a least 90% of the total number of forensic patients. In 1994 we looked at the development of the prevalence of forensic patients, figure 1, Kramp and Gabrielsen, 1994. The dotted line is the number of patients increasing from about 300 in 1980 to about 700 in 1993. The smooth line is the statistical model showing an annual growth rate on 6.83%.From 1980 until 1993, the growth exhibited an almost perfect exponential growth. Such a curve is a rarity within the social sciences; one expect exponential growth within biology or physics but never within the social sciences. This is due to the fact, that developments in social sciences are affected by feed back mechanisms. Nevertheless, to find an exponential growth curve in this case might be because the forensic patients form a rather small fraction of patients within the mental health care system, and thereby has not been noticed until now. Three years later in 1996 we repeated the study, Kramp and Gabrielsen,1996. We extrapolated the model with an annual growth rate on 6.83%, figure 2, and we inspected how reality - the number of patients - fitted the model, figure 3. As it appears from the figure the model fits almost perfect - the growth rate still seems to be 6.83%. It can be added that the prevalence of forensic patients is still growing - at the end of April 1998 the number has increased to 1068. One can add this last point to figure 3 and see that the model still fits. 171
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Organised Crime & Crime Prevention
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Rådsmedlemmer: Flemming Balvig, Da
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