The Mentally Retarded Offender

Offending Behaviour in Adults with Asperger Syndrome

“…Research both within the United States (Brown and Courtless 1971;MacEachron 1979) and the United Kingdom (Coid 1984;Gudjonnson 1983;Gunn et al 1991;Lyall et al 1995) has, for example, attempted to identify the experience of people with intellectual disabilities within the judicial system. Murphy et al (1995) concluded that, although men with intellectual disabilities were not over-represented in a population on remand in prison, there were prisoners in the borderline range who were also psychologically extremely vulnerable.…”

The Offender with Mental Retardation

“…In most studies, offenders with retardation were overwhelmingly members of minority groups (Brown and Courtless, 1967;Haskins and Friel, 1973 (Allen, 1968;Hagerty et al, 1972). 5.…”

“…A person with retardation often pleads guilty more readily than nonretarded persons and is more often convicted of the arresting offense rather than a reduced charge. Plea bargaining to reduce charges, and thereby sentences, in a vast majority of cases today is used less frequently for the person with retardation (Brown and Courtless, 1967).…”

“…Zeleny (1933) studied the findings of intelligence tests of over 60,000 inmates and reports that in fact the number of offenders with mental retardation is close to 30 percent of the inmate population. A comprehensive effort to identify the number of incarcerated offenders with retardation was conducted by Brown and Courtless ( 1967) in which they report that 9.5 percent of the inmate population was mentally retarded (I.Q. below 70).…”

Characteristics of the mentally retarded adolescent offender and their implications for residential treatment design

“…Thereafter, programming should continue in a nonsecure group home, and finally, on an outpatient basis, in the generic community service system. Fernald's (1909) widely-read identification and description of mentally retarded (MR) adolescent offenders is credited as the initial impetus for establishing seperate residential programs for these youth (Brown & Courtless, 1971). That pivotal article labeled this group as "morally insensible,'' unable to act upon what CCC 0884-5581/86/010073-18$04.~ they know to be right and wrong, unremorseful, unresponsive to treatment, "mawkishly sentimental," cowardly in the face of danger, and highly suggestible.…”