[Unauthorized absence and recidivism during court ordered psychiatric treatment leave]

Leave is an essential part of treatment within the framework of the tbs measure (court ordered psychiatric treatment for offenders with a mental disorder). Traditionally, these leaves lead to concerns about safety.

To study how often tbs-patients do not return from leave (on time) and how often they commit a crime during an unauthorized absence (UA). In addition, we investigate whether patient or offence characteristics can predict an UA.

All UA’s between 2009-2020 were examined. We also analysed the patient characteristics of 11,525 permit applications between 2010 and 2018 from the registration system of the Advisory Board for Permitting Leave TBS (AVT).

2.5% of the applications for leave between 2009 and 2020 involved an UA and 0.15% involved an UA with a recidivism. Patients with a cluster B personality disorder, substance use disorder, mood disorder, attention disorder, arson or a serious violent crime as an index offence had a significantly higher chance of having an UA. However, these associations were very weak. The risk factor violation of conditions (from the Dutch risk assessment tool, the HKT (Historical, Clinical, Future)) was also a significant but very weak predictor of UA.

UA is a rare event. Despite the fact that some patient and offence characteristics were associated with an UA, this relationship is weak and predicting an UA is difficult.