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Despite extensive public health campaigns, the consequences of alcohol intoxication continue to be a serious public health concern. Alcohol intoxication, for example, is a prevalent feature of crime, especially violent crime. Previous studies of alcohol intoxication and violent crime have used samples of police reports, correctional populations (arrestees, jail detainees, or convicted offenders), or community surveys. Studies using police reports and correctional populations are biased because few police-citizen encounters result in police reports or arrest. Community surveys avoid these biases but rely on the subject's assessment of both the victims' and the suspects' intoxication. We took a different approach and directly observed 2,365 police-citizen encounters. Observers used the Alcohol Symptom Checklist to determine the level of alcohol intoxication or impairment. We compared the prevalence of suspects' and victims' alcohol intoxication (equivalent to a blood alcohol level [BAL] of .05 or above) by type of encounter and computed odds ratios to assess the association between intoxication and type of encounter. We also controlled for demographic characteristics (race, gender, age, and socio-economic status) to assess the relationships among perpetration, victimization, and intoxication. Overall, suspects are far more likely than victims to be intoxicated; not surprisingly, suspects in public order/vandalism encounters are the most likely to be intoxicated. Alcohol intoxication appears to contribute substantially to violent victimization. The role of alcohol intoxication is largest among groups that, if not intoxicated, are generally less vulnerable to violence: whites, males, and persons of higher socio-economic status. We discuss the implications of these findings for services and public health policy.

The authors examined whether jail detainees with schizophrenia, major affective disorders, alcohol or drug use disorders, or psychotic symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) are arrested more often for violent crimes six years after release than detainees with no disorders. Trained interviewers assessed 728 randomly selected male jail detainees using the National Institute of Mental Health Diagnostic Interview Schedule and then obtained follow-up arrest data for six years. Neither severe mental disorder nor substance abuse or dependence predicted the probability of arrest or the number of arrests for violent crime. Persons with symptoms of both hallucinations and delusions had a slightly higher number of arrests for violent crime, but not significantly so. These findings held even after controlling for prior violence and age. The findings do not support the stereotype that mentally ill criminals invariably commit violent crimes after they are released. Future directions for research are suggested.

A longstanding controversy is the relative dangerousness and criminality of the mentally ill. The author presents observational data from 1,072 police-citizen encounters in an urban area. The data show that persons exhibiting signs of serious mental disorder were not suspected of serious crimes at a rate disproportionate to their numbers in the population. The patterns of crime for mentally disordered persons and for non-mentally-disordered persons were substantially similar. These data help dispel the myth that the mentally ill constitute a dangerous group prone to violent crime.