Recidivism and Inmate Mental Illness

Purpose: With over 700,000 mentally ill inmates are held in U.S. jails and prisons, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of the effect of mental illness among released prisoners on a series of re-entry recidivism outcomes.Methods: Using a cohort of 200,889 inmates released from Florida prisons from 2004 to 2011, several recidivism outcomes are examined among 40,145 individuals with a mental health diagnosis and 10,826 with a serious mental illness are compared with inmates without a mental illness diagnosis. We control for a host of factors known to influence recidivism outcomes using binary logistic regression for one, two, and three year follow-up periods and survival analysis to assess the timing to recidivism.Results: Inmates diagnosed with any type of mental illness are significantly more likely to recidivate and among inmates with a mental illness, those diagnosed with a serious mental condition are significantly more likely to recidivate than those with a less serious mental illness diagnosis.Conclusions: Policies and practices need to ensure that in-prison and community mental health systems have sufficient resources and capacity to adequately address the needs of inmates with mental health issues to reduce the likelihood of these individuals re-offending and ultimately returning to prison

Mental illness in prison: Recidivism rates and diagnostic criteria

The purpose of the descriptive, quantitative study was to examine recidivism rates of mentally ill incarcerated individuals. With data provided by the Florida Department of Corrections, the current study sought to describe recidivism rates of mentally ill offenders who, within three years of release, returned to prison. The use of descriptive statistics provided information through means, modes, and frequencies, which led to incorporating logistic regression to provide further details concerning recidivism. The sample consisted initially of more than 120,000 offenders released, and narrowed to more than 20,000 released with a mental health diagnosis in the studied time frame, 2005 to 2008. The study consisted of 11 categorical and individual diagnoses while incorporating analyses of demographics, crimes committed, educational level, past incarcerations, and other variables in relation to mental health diagnoses. The results identified those with a mental health diagnosis were more apt to return to prison within the three-year time frame than those with no diagnosis. Specifically, those with a Schizophrenia diagnosis had a higher recidivism rate than the other diagnoses studied. Other variables found positive for recidivism were age, gender, and prior prison arrest record