The national trajectory project of individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder. Part 5: how essential are gender-specific forensic psychiatric services?

Objective: To state the sociodemographic characteristics, mental health histories, index offence characteristics, and criminal histories of male and female forensic psychiatric patients. Clinicians and researchers advocate that mental health and criminal justice organizations implement gender-specific services; however, few studies have sampled forensic patients to evaluate the extent to which men's and women's treatment and management needs are different.

Method: Data were collected from Review Board files from May 2000 to April 2005 in the 3 largest Canadian provinces.

The national trajectory project of individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder in Canada. Part 3: trajectories and outcomes through the forensic system.

Objective: To examine the processing and Review Board (RB) disposition outcomes of people found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) across the 3 most populous provinces in Canada. Although the Criminal Code is federally legislated, criminal justice is administered by provinces and territories. It follows that a person with mental illness who comes into conflict with the law and subsequently comes under the management of a legally mandated RB may experience different trajectories across jurisdictions.

The national trajectory project of individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder in Canada. Part 2: the people behind the label.

Objective: To examine the psychosocio-criminological characteristics of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD)-accused people and compare them across the 3 most populous provinces. In Canada, the number of people found NCRMD has risen during the past 20 years. The Criminal Code is federally legislated but provincially administered, and mental health services are provincially governed.

The national trajectory project of individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder in Canada. Part 1: context and methods.

The National Trajectory Project examined longitudinal data from a large sample of people found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) to assess the presence of provincial differences in the application of the law, to examine the characteristics of people with serious mental illness who come into conflict with the law and receive this verdict, and to investigate the trajectories of NCRMD-accused people as they traverse the mental health and criminal justice systems. Our paper describes the rationale for the National Trajectory Project and the methods used to collect data in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia, the 3 most populous provinces in Canada and the 3 provinces with the most people found NCRMD.