Deadly thoughts of offenders may hold answer to reducing crime
working in the correctional system, while earning his Ph.D. He recalled the case of a 19-year-old convicted of murder in a hate crime and sentenced to life in prison.
“What struck me was that when this man was three and four years old, he was making homicidal statements directed toward his mom and in general,” DeLisi said. “Homicide offenders will have these pervasive thoughts and feelings about killing even in early childhood.”
DeLisi and his colleagues found similar examples in the data analyzed for the study. They looked at psychological and presentencing reports for 863 clients on federal supervised release to assess homicidal ideation. The majority of the sample were white men, and the most common conviction offense was distribution of methamphetamine.
Researchers controlled for several factors including gender, race, intermittent explosive disorder, antisocial personality disorder, conduct disorder, schizophrenia and age of arrest. DeLisi says this is important as it shows homicidal ideation is not a byproduct of other conditions and stands alone as an explanation for these crimes.
Policy implications and treatment
It has been shown that 5 to 10 percent of offenders commit half of all crimes, DeLisi said. They also account for 60 to 100 percent of the most severe offenses, including crimes of violence and violence against law enforcement and corrections officers. Identifying these chronic offenders can have a significant impact on protecting the public from further crimes because probation officers can assign additional treatment and monitoring to these cases.
Knowing who these chronic offenders are can also help probation officers safely conduct home and community contacts, DeLisi said. For example, based on this research, federal probation officials could require two or even three officers, rather than one, to visit offenders with homicidal ideation. Supervisors could assign these high-risk cases to their most senior officers, including mental health specialists, to ensure experienced oversight.
The findings also have implications for criminal justice and sentencing reform. DeLisi says most of these offenders are psychopaths who are unlikely to be rehabilitated without sustained, intensive treatment. However, treatment is often unsuccessful because of the time and resources required. DeLisi explained that most offenders don’t have insurance, and often fail to maintain their medications once they’re released from prison. The best option is for judges to mandate mental health treatment, including medication coupled with intensive supervision that puts officer safety at the forefront, he said.
“It’s important to understand these offenders because they commit so many more severe crimes, which allows you to do more from a policy perspective,” DeLisi said. “Many of these offenders should probably never be released from confinement, and we may need to rethink sentencing guidelines for these individuals.”
DeLisi believes these offenders may require a “containment” approach used to supervise sex offenders in the community, with the premise that protection of society, not rehabilitation of the offender, is the prominent goal. He says the collaboration with U.S. Probation also identified low-risk offenders who may do better with community-based supervision or sanctions, instead of prison. ISU notes that the team is currently conducting research on the lower-risk group of offenders.
— Read more in Matt DeLisi et al., “The Criminology of Homicidal Ideation: Associations with Criminal Careers and Psychopathology among Federal Correctional Clients,” American Journal of Criminal Justice (21 October 2016): 1-20 (DOI: 10.1007/s12103-016-9371-5)
