Theoretical Biology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2020 Sep-Oct;72:101608. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2020.101608. Epub 2020 Aug 7.
Penrose described an observation in 1939, according to which an inverse relationship between the size of prison populations and the number of psychiatric beds existed. The purpose of this article was to investigate the validity of this statement for Hungary. The national data between 1989 and 2017 for 25 variables were extracted from the official reports of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The number of psychiatric beds decreased by 33%, while the number of prisoners increased by about 50%. At the same time, the number of mentally ill patients under compulsive treatment was low, but showed a slight, statistically significant increase. Variables measuring similar feature, for example, the psychiatric characteristics (alcoholics registered, suicide rate, number of hospital beds, welfare home inmates) are variables consistently moving in one direction or the other that may allow finding appropriate indicators of and explanations for the phenomena. An example is the number of psychiatric beds showing a parallel decrease to the numbers of total hospital beds, registered alcoholics, out-patient clinics for children, and suicide rate, and just the opposite direction with forensic settling, involuntary admissions, and welfare home inmates. Similarly, crimes, criminals, homicides, and prisoners can also be grouped. Correlation does not mean a cause and effect relationship, therefore, at the current state of knowledge the connection among variables is not clear in all the cases. To sum up, Hungarian statistical data for three decades support Penrose's original observation on psychiatric beds and prison population, while the Penrose's statement on the inverse relationship between the number of crimes and of psychiatric beds is not supported. However, until deeper relationships are explored, aggregation of variables into few factors seems impossible.
彭罗斯在 1939 年描述了一种观察结果，即监狱人口的大小与精神病床位的数量之间存在反比关系。本文的目的是调查这一说法在匈牙利的有效性。1989 年至 2017 年期间，从匈牙利中央统计局的官方报告中提取了 25 个变量的全国数据。精神病床位数量减少了 33%，而囚犯人数增加了约 50%。与此同时，强制治疗的精神病患者数量较少，但呈略有上升趋势，具有统计学意义。衡量类似特征的变量，例如精神病特征（登记的酗酒者、自杀率、医院床位数量、福利院收容人数）是一致朝一个方向或另一个方向移动的变量，这可能有助于找到现象的适当指标和解释。一个例子是精神病床位数量与总医院床位数量、登记的酗酒者、儿童门诊和自杀率平行减少，而与法医解决、非自愿入院和福利院收容人数则呈相反方向。同样，犯罪、罪犯、凶杀和囚犯也可以分组。相关性并不意味着因果关系，因此，在目前的知识状态下，所有情况下变量之间的联系都不清楚。总之，匈牙利三十年来的统计数据支持彭罗斯关于精神病床位和监狱人口的原始观察结果，而彭罗斯关于犯罪数量和精神病床位数量之间的反比关系的说法则不成立。然而，在深入探讨更深层次的关系之前，将变量汇总为少数因素似乎是不可能的。
