The Community Adjustment and Criminal Activity of the Baxstrom Patients: 1966-1970

This research examines what happened to the nearly 1,000 patients transferred from two New York State hospitals for the criminally insane to civil mental hospitals in 1966 as the result of a Supreme Court decision. Four years later, about half were in civil mental hospitals, 27 percent in the community, and 14 percent dead. Only three percent were in a correctional facility or hospital for the criminally insane. The authors stress the need for more longitudinal research on the characteristics of the criminally insane to aid in the clinical determination of dangerousness.