The Time Before the Crime - Risk Patterns in Offenders Undergoing a Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation

The overarching aim of the research project is to identify risk patterns preceding criminal acts among individuals later subject to forensic psychiatric evaluation (FPE) in Sweden, including factors within psychiatric care as well as broader individual or contextual factors.

Although individuals who undergo an FPE represent a small subset of all individuals who commit criminal acts, the implications of being sentenced to forensic psychiatric care are profound. In Sweden, approximately 300 individuals are transferred to forensic psychiatric care each year, with a median duration of 7.5 years. Notably, the number of admissions exceeds the number of discharges annually, resulting in a growing forensic psychiatric population. This increasing trend underscores the need for increased knowledge and preventive efforts. All forensic psychiatric patients undergo an FPE before the sentencing, and previous studies show that most of these individuals were already known to the psychiatric system prior to the offenses, which means that individuals in these groups are overlapping. However, the mean length of stay in psychiatric inpatient compulsory care is much shorter than that in forensic psychiatric care. Clinical expertise from FPEs suggests that identifiable risk patterns may exist before the criminal offence. The question of whether such potential risk patterns exist within this patient group has not been systematically studied before, which is why the current study aims to investigate this issue. Can risk patterns be identified within psychiatric care prior to the offense? If risk patterns can be identified, knowledge of such risk patterns could hopefully increase risk awareness within psychiatric services and lead to more frequent and accurate violence risk assessments. Knowledge of such risk patterns could also serve as a foundation for preventive measures. The long-term goal is to reduce the likelihood that individuals receiving psychiatric care progress to becoming forensic psychiatric patients.