The Camberwell Study of Crime and Schizophrenia

I report a population-based longitudinal study of all incident cases of schizophrenia (n = 538) in the London Borough of Camberwell between 1964 and 1984. The rates of criminal convictions are compared with those in a control sample representative of non-schizophrenic mental disorders matched for age, sex and period. The results show that women with schizophrenia have an increased rate of offending across all offence categories (rate ratio = 3.3). There is no overall increase for males, but a specific increase for violent convictions (rate ratio = 3.8). Looking at the risk of acquiring a first conviction, there is an independent but modest effect of schizophrenia (hazard ratio = 1.4), but the effects of gender, substance abuse, ethnicity and age at onset were more substantial.