Pathopsychological features of a recidivist with mental abnormalities

The relevance of studying the pathopsychological characteristics of a criminal’s personality is due to the extremely high level of recidivism of violent crimes in our country. In the course of a theoretical analysis of the works of Russian researchers, mainly of the last three years, devoted to the problem of recidivism, statistics of the Judicial Department under the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the results of studies of the personal characteristics of recidivists convicted of violent crimes are presented. The author gives the accepted in the scientific environment the interpretation of the concept of “mental anomaly”, considers the types of mental anomalies, as well as the classification of the main groups of criminals with mental anomalies. Analyzing the destructive behavior of repeat offenders, scientists associate it with unfavorable conditions for the development of the criminal’s personality, which aggravate the existing mental anomalies. The author comes to the conclusion that the presence of mental abnormalities in recidivist criminals is much more common than in persons committing single crimes. A review of modern domestic research allows us to draw attention to the methods used to collect information about the personality of a recidivist offender, as well as to the direct relationship between the number of convictions, the time interval of recidivism, and types of mental abnormalities.