Citation

Rice ME, Harris GT. J. Interpers. Violence 1996; 11(3): 364-375.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/088626096011003004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The psychiatric literature has asserted that arsonists are a particularly dangerous group of mentally disordered offenders with a high likelihood of setting further fires, yet the scant empirical data do not support that contention. We examined the postrelease firesetting, violent, and nonviolent recidivism of 208 male firesetters who had been admitted to a maximum security psychiatric hospital. In an average period of 7.8 years at risk, 16% set another fire, 31% committed a violent offense, 57% committed a nonviolent offense, and 66% exhibited some form of recidivism. In general, personal characteristics that predicted firesetting recidivism were quite different from those that predicted nonviolent outcome and very different from those that predicted violent recidivism.

Language: en