Ogilvie J1,2, Tzoumakis S1,2, Thompson C1,2, Allard T1,2, Dennison S1,2, Kisely S3
1School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, 2Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University, 3School of Clinical Medicine, University of Queensland
Biography:
Dr Ogilvie is a lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. His research is focused on the links between mental illness and offending, and how these links evolve over time.
The link between psychiatric illness and offending is well-established; however, less is known about how different psychiatric illnesses influence reoffending for different offence types. Using linked health and justice data for a birth cohort, we examined the relationship between different psychiatric disorders (e.g., serious mental illnesses, mood and anxiety disorders, substance use disorders) and reoffending (e.g., violent, non-violent, minor). Data were drawn from a population cohort of N=83,039 individuals born in Queensland, Australia, in 1983 and 1984 and followed to age 29-31 years. Psychiatric diagnoses were drawn from inpatient health records and offending information was drawn from youth and adult court and police records. Descriptive and recurrent event survival analyses were conducted to examine the association between psychiatric disorders and reoffending. The sample included 26,651 individuals with at least one proven offence, with 3,580 (13.4%) of these individuals also having a psychiatric disorder. Individuals with any psychiatric disorder were more likely to reoffend compared to those without a disorder (73.1% vs. 56.0%). Associations between psychiatric disorders and reoffending varied across age. Individuals with a psychiatric disorder only started to accumulate more reoffending events from about 27 years, which accelerated up to age 31 years. There were both specificity and common effects in the associations between different psychiatric disorders and types of reoffending. Findings demonstrate the complexity and temporal dependency of the relationship between psychiatric illness and reoffending. These results reveal the heterogeneity present among individuals who experience psychiatric illness and contact with the justice system, with implications for intervention delivery.