Research Article 1 J Foren Psy, Vol. 4 Iss. 3 No: 152 OPEN ACCESS Freely available online Journal of Forensic Psychology J o u r n a l o f F o r e n sic P s y c h o l o g y ISSN: 2475-319X Risk-Taking Behaviour and Criminal Responsibility: A Preliminary Investigation with Offenders and Forensic Psychiatric Patients Roxana E. Moghaddam*, Monica F. Tomlinson Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Canada ABSTRACT The present study investigated whether individuals found criminally responsible (CR) differ from individuals found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) on behavioural measures of risk- taking. Risk-taking was measured using two computerized tasks, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). CR individuals were hypothesized to show greater risk-taking behaviours compared to NCRMD individuals. Performance on the IGT and BART was also hypothesized to predict NCRMD or CR group membership. Thirty-eight forensic psychiatric patients and offenders participated in this study. A t-test and logistic regression were conducted to address these hypotheses. No significant differences in risk-taking were found between NCRMD and CR individuals on the IGT and BART. Further, performance on the IGT and BART did not predict NCRMD or CR group membership. These results suggest that NCRMD and CR individuals are similar in levels of risk and may be similar in other criminogenic needs that have not been studied here. Future research is needed to understand the extent to which the rehabilitative needs of forensic psychiatric patients and offenders overlap. Keywords: Balloon analogue risk task; Iowa gambling task; Criminally responsible; Not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder; Risk-taking behaviour Correspondence to: Roxana Ehsani-Moghaddam, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Canada, Tel: +15194290410, E-mail: rehsanim@uwo.ca; roxanaehsanimoghadda@carleton.ca. Received: September 26, 2019, Accepted: November 29, 2019, Published: December 05, 2019 Citation: Moghaddam RE, Tomlinson MF (2019) Risk-Taking Behaviour and Criminal Responsibility: A Preliminary Investigation with Offenders and Forensic Psychiatric Patients. J Foren Psy. 4:152. doi: 10.35248/2475-319X.19.4.152 Copyright: © 2019 Moghaddam RE, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. INTRODUCTION According to Section 16 of the Criminal Code of Canada [1], if an individual committed a crime while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered them unable to appreciate the nature of the crime or knowing that it was wrong, then that person should be found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of a Mental Disorder (NCRMD). In these cases, through a court-ordered assessment, the court is deciding that these individuals do not have the decision-making ability to have criminal intent at the time of their offence. These assessments are conducted by psychiatrists, and therefore pose the risk of being subjective in nature. The present study’s objective is to investigate whether two objective measures of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), can be used predict whether an individual will be found NCRMD or criminally responsible (CR). The ultimate aim is to identify objective and easy-to-administer measures of risky decision-making, which would could potentially be supplemental to risk assessments. For a person to be found CR for a crime in Canada, the court must prove both actus reus, or “guilty act” and mens rea, or “guilty mind”. For actus reus to be supported, there must be sufficient evidence that an accused person committed the crime. For mens rea to be supported there must be sufficient evidence that the accused person intended to commit the crime [2]. Once there is sufficient evidence for actus reus, mens rea must be assessed. For individuals with serious mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) who committed crimes while ill, a court-ordered assessment of criminally responsibility is required to determine whether the mens rea condition is satisfied for the crime in question, termed the index offense. This assessment may require the accused person to be detained in a forensic psychiatric hospital and evaluated for several weeks to months [3]. If there is sufficient evidence that the index offense was caused directly by the symptoms of an accused person’s mental illness, a recommendation will be made to the court stating that the accused person was unable to appreciate the nature and consequences of the index offense, and mens rea is not satisfied. If an individual is found NCRMD by the courts and continues to pose a risk to society, then he/she will enter the forensic psychiatric system and receive psychiatric care to address the source of their criminal behaviour: their mental disorder. At times, the court-