| Research suggests that mentally ill offenders may be more likely to engage in violence and rule-breaking behavior within prisons. This study hypothesized that offenders with symptoms of major mental disorder and severe personality pathology, including psychopathy, would exhibit higher levels of retrospectively assessed institutional maladjustment, defined by four measures of violence, rule-breaking, and victimization. Self-report and institutional record data were collected from 106 participants on psychopathology, maladjustment, and self-appraisal risk variables. Results suggest that institutional maladjustment is a multimodal construct that is only moderately related to a variety of major mental disorder syndromes. The most robust finding was that self-appraised likelihood to react to provocation with violence significantly postdicted violence. Patterns of the relationship between psychopathy and maladjustment are also presented. |
