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The increase in the number of criminal offenses committed by people with schizophrenia has nothing to do with their early release from closed hospitals, research has concluded. The reason for the figures is that society itself has become more criminal, the study, published in The Lancet, says. The researchers, led by Paul Mullen of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health in Australia, compared statistics of crimes committed by schizophrenics and an average cross-section of the population in 1975 -- when most serious schizophrenics were in secure hospitals -- and after the introduction of widespread community care in 1985.

"Increased rates in criminal conviction for those with schizophrenia over the past 20 years are consistent with change in the pattern of offending in the general community," Professor Mullen says. "Deinstitutionalization does not adequately explain such a change."

The assumption that criminal behavior is increasing among the seriously mentally ill is untested, he says, and results of his close study of patients and crime statistics over the 20 years show that there have been no increases in offending if the rates are compared to the increase in offending in the general population.

Increasing attention being paid to offending and violent behaviors in schizophrenics is likely to have more to do with an increased awareness of the phenomenon than any increase in these behaviors, he says. "To return to a situation in which those individuals in the early stages of a schizophrenic illness spend extended periods in institutions will require the clock to be turned back several decades and its influence on offending, if any, remains uncertain," the professor concludes.