MENTALLY DISORDERED OFFENDERS ACCOUNTS OF THEIR CRIMES

Sixty male offenders newly admitted to a secure psychiatric setting ma de 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 off ense description to explain and rate. In addition, control subjects ev aluated the eight standard history and offense descriptions. There wer e no differences in the ratings of the standard crime and history desc riptions between offenders and their yoked controls, except that offen ders rated the causes of other offenders' crimes as less stable and ot hers' likelihood of reoffending as lower than did nonoffenders. As pre dicted, personality-disordered stimulus offenders were rated as more b lameworthy, more likely to reoffend, and more responsible for their cr imes than psychotic stimulus offenders. Offenders rated themselves as less likely to reoffend than their yoked controls rated them.