One hundred and twentyeight mentally ill criminals who had been referred to National Mental Hospital during the period of 1971-1976, for deter-mine criminal responsibility, were presented under statistical evaluation.
The data obtained were analyzed in respect to personal back ground, category of mental illness and the ´ nature of crime.
Some of their characteristics were as follow:
1) Male criminals occupied most of them(85.7 %), the ratio of male: female was 5.7:1. in female criminal cases, they were almost schizophrenics except 2 cases. About 70% of them were between 2039 in their age, and in the case of mental retardation, almost all of them were under the age in the twenties. Concerning the marital status, more than half of them were single. The divorced, seperated and the widowed occupied only few percentage (8.6%). Educationally, more than half of them belonged to the level of or below the primary school course and 17.2% were completely not educated. About half of the criminals were the people on the outskirts of a large city(mostly in Seoul). As a whole, the level of their living were poor with 57% of the cases being out of job. Skilled, professional workers including students were no more than 12.5%.
2) Majority of their criminal acts (72.7%) were committed by the schizophrenics. Next were mental retardation (9.4%), personality disorder (6.3 %), organic brain syndrome (6.3%), paranoia (2. 3%), epilepsy (2.3%) and MDI (0.8%) in its descending order.
3) In criminal contents, the most were homicidal and attempted homicidal cases (43.8%), which were mostly the schizophrenics. Next was offenses against the law of anti-communism UK), physical violence (11.7;;), larceny (8.60%) and other variable criminal contents.
4) In general, the criminals selected the neighbours more than others as a victim, but their family members were extremely higher (more than half) than extrafamily members as a victim in schizophrenic murders, whereas, almost baby strangers in mental retardation. Characteristically, majority of female schizophrenic murderers selected their own baby as a victim under the acute schizophrenic state around the puerperal period.
5) As regarding their motivational factors for criminal acts, it was due to delusional ideation., hallucination including pathological acute fugue state mostly (57%), which was most prominent in schizophrenic murder, the neat were result of immaturity and infantile primitive condition, especially in majority cases of mental retardation, and the next were paroxysmal emotional insanity provoked by trivial events, most prominent in personality disorder. Only few cases were indicated as consciously motivated acts.
6) Majority of the cases were suspected some-thing changed in offender´s mental status by their family members at least 2 months before the criminal acts, but about 80% of all criminals were neglected by their family without any formal or other informal therapeutic trials at that time.
The Mental Health Act including some devices of prevention of mentally ill criminal acts should be established under national planning as early as possible, in author´s opinion.
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