Court sentences to forensic-psychiatric treatment and imprisonment in Germany: Types of crimes and changes from 1995 to 2009

The management of mentally disordered offenders varies widely across countries. Given the high prevalence of individuals with mental disorders throughout the criminal justice system, it is not always clear why some people receive forensic treatment and others a prison sentence. This project investigated trends in criminal justice sentencing practices in Germany from 1995 to 2009. We analysed officially recorded data taken from 14,100,329 court rulings to describe differences in the index offences committed by individuals sentenced to prison of at least two years and those given a forensic treatment order. The distribution of offence types differed substantially. Forensic patients committed 6.6% of all severe crimes. There was a 50% increase in the number of forensic treatment orders compared to a 11.6% increase in the group of individuals sentenced for crimes of a similar severity. Forensic patients were more likely to have committed a serious offence. This paper provides key epidemiological data and offers a basis for future comparative research. It also concludes that these trends are indicative of a moderate penal policy, without a drift towards penal populism arguably visible in other jurisdictions. Instead, it is argued that the findings are consistent with actuarial social control policies oriented towards risk prediction and crime prevention of high-risk offender groups.