E. Glenn Schellenberg,* Donald Wasylenki,** Christopher D. Webster,*** and Paul Goering**** Common wisdom has it that “trouble with the law” is a serious problem for psychiatric patients. This may be especially so for chronically mentally ill patients, most of whom have a diagnosis of schizophrenia. However, little is known about how often clinicians should expect to encounter this problem, or about the factors involved. In a major review of the literature, Rabkin (1979) divided relevant studies into two groups-those published before 1965 and those published after. The earlier studies showed that arrest rates for patients were lower than rates for the general population (Ashley, 1922; Brill & Malzberg, 1962; Cohen & Free- man, 1945; Pollock, 1938). Studies published between 1965 and 1979 showed arrest rates of patients to be equal to, or greater than, those of the general population (Durbin, Pasewark, & Albers, 1977; Giovanni & Gurel, 1967; Rap- peport & Lassen, 1965, 1966; Sosowski, 1974, 1978; Steadman, Cocozza, & Melick, 1978; Zitrin, Hardesty, & Burdock, 1976). Rabkin (1979) attributed the increase in arrest rates to an increase in the proportion of patients with prior criminal records. It is important to note, however, that thousands of patients were “deinstitutionalized” between 1965 and 1974. The bed capacity of U.S. state hospitals diminished from 550,000 in 1961 to 110,000 by 1975 (Bassack & Gerson, 1978), placing many more patients at risk for arrest. Data concerning schizophrenia and risk for arrest were equivocal. Rabkin concluded that schizophrenics are no more likely to be arrested than are other diagnostic groups, with the exception of violent crime, for which schizophren- ics may have higher rates of arrest. She also concluded that psychiatric pa- tients, in general, are not predisposed to be arrested for some crimes as op- posed to others, with the exception of assaultive behavior, for which they are more likely than other persons to be arrested. No conclusions could be reached concerning the effect of psychiatric hospitalization or treatment on arrest rates. This report examines research conducted since 1980 concerned with arrest