ABSTRACT

In the realm of criminal justice policy and practice, the term ‘mentally disordered offender’ is frequently used. It presumes some form of relationship between a person’s mental state and their criminal offending or subsequent involvement in the criminal justice system. It implies also that there is not commonly a relationship between mental state and offending for other offenders. Yet closer scrutiny of this category reveals the ‘plurality’ of a population who are neither homogenous nor exclusive and who challenge accepted notions of illness and offending behaviour (Peay 2002: 746; see also Peay 2004). While the classification of someone as a ‘mentally disordered offender’ is singular in nature, it obscures the many differences among the people encompassed by the term. These include people who have been convicted of an offence and diverted to hospital prior to serving a sentence; transferred out of prison into hospital for compulsory treatment; found unfit to stand trial because of their mental disorder; acquitted on the grounds of insanity; or those who have been convicted of an offence but diverted to hospital for compulsory treatment of their mental disorder (James, Farnham et al. 2002).