A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RECIDIVISTS AND NON-RECIDIVISTS AMONG PSYCHOPATHIC OFFENDERS.

The article presents information on a report, which is based on the clinical records of 286 male psychopathic federal offenders who are admitted to and later discharged from the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri. All were received by transfer from other federal penal and correctional institutions. On the basis of Federal Bureau of Investigation reports, as of the first six months of 1945, 42 per cent of the subjects had become recidivists, that is, either had served time or were serving time in city, county, state, or federal penal institutions subsequent to release from the Medical Center. On the other hand, 58 per cent were still presumably out of trouble. The recidivists and non-recidivists were then compared for various factors in an effort to find differential criteria. The findings are more or less what one would expect. The article also includes information on details of factors involving statistical significance that are found to have some value in distinguishing a recidivist from a non-recidivist and vice versa.