Mentally ill offenders and their medical treatment according to the criminal law of Croatia.

The authors have analyzed psychopathological and criminal characteristics of the 75 patients, regarding the census on 31. 12. 1985. Group 1 (N = 55) was committed by court for inpatient treatment and group 2 (N = 20) was committed by court for outpatient treatment. The analysis was based on the data in psychiatric expertises and medical files containing the relevant facts for the study. 46 patients (92%) in the first group are diagnosed as psychotic disturbances, regarding the ICD-9, while in the second group there were 15 patients (75%) of the same diagnostic category. The other patients were diagnosed as mentally ill (including the mentally retarded, epileptic etc. patients). The age distribution shows that a majority of the patients of the first group are between 31-50 years (73%) and for the second group the rate is 50%. According to the criminal acts the first group mainly consists of patients who had committed one murder or more (36 + 3), while in the second group the patients offended against property and committed body violations (8 + 6). The average institutional treatment, which is not legally limited, is over 10 years, and for outpatient treatment group it is 13 months, legally limited up to 2 years. The main criterion for psychiatric and legal distribution of the patients into two groups is the estimation of their social danger. The given data prove that the estimation of the social danger is mainly defined by the psychopathological characteristics of the subjects and the type of the criminal act they committed, while the other parameters are less influential for the estimation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)