Detention and rearrest rates of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity and convicted felons

The authors compared 42 men and 8 women who had been found not guilty by reason of insanity with a group of subjects who had been convicted of a felony (matched in criminal offenses, age, education, marital status, previous arrests, and sex). They found that the acquitted subjects spent significantly less time in the hospital than the matched subjects spent in prison. They also found that about the same number of acquitted subjects who had been released from the hospital were rearrested as were control subjects who had been released from prison. Many more acquitted subjects were rehospitalized than were released control subjects. There appears to have been a change in detention patterns after a switch to the American Law Institute rule and a greater role for the Department of Mental Hygiene in acquittees' hospitalizations.