The mentally disordered criminal offender: a description based on demographic, clinical, and MMPI data

From 340 MMPIs of male forensic state hospital patients, seven disjoint clusters were obtained by an innovative cluster strategy that combined Ward's hierarchical clustering with a partitioning method. The cluster groups differed on racial composition and DSM-III Axis II diagnoses. The lack of differences among the cluster groups on other clinically relevant variables may be due to the choice of measures and the homogeneous nature of the sample. Two-point code frequencies are presented for these 340 profiles. Demographic variables available on 434 subjects suggested considerable similarities between this group and prison populations. The analysis further suggested that factors such as sociopathy, substance abuse, psychosis with paranoid features, and a history of criminal activities distinguish these offenders from the benign mentally ill.