• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
• /
• v.39
• /
• pp.350-373
• /
• 1999

The patient population of U. S. state mental hospitals has changed drastically since the 1960s, when the deintstitutionalization movement began. This paper is designed to look at what happened to the number of inpatients of state hospitals in California during the last 150 years and, from this, to explore implications for the future of the mental health system in Korea, especially for the viability of mental hospitals. The data had been collected by field research(visits to state hospitals and State Department of Mental Health, and interviews with mental health administrators) and accessing statistical publications and various reports. Since the first state hospital opened in 1851 the statewide inpatient population of individuals who were mentally disabled has grown and peaked at 37,489 in 1959. The number of patients in state hospitals, however, began declining in the early 1960s and was reduced to 10,874 by 1971, and to 4,973 by 1986. As of 1997, there were only 4, 263 inpatients remaining in the state hospital system. This dramatic decrease slowed down somewhat in 1980s and 1990s, but this trend seems irreversible except for the inpatients referred by the court. Now the beds in state hospitals are filled with more and more forensic patients, which constitutes nearly 70% of the total inpatient population. Based on these findings, it is well expected that the number of inpatients of mental hospitals in Korea will also be reduced in a significant way as the community-based mental health care system is gradually replacing the traditional one. Mental hospitals need to introduce more diversified programs for the care of the mentally ill, and concurrently more vigorous aftercare programs are required in the community.

• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.1-22
• /
• 2022

This study tested the effect of the verdict category of lay-participation trial in Korea on the legal decision of layperson and the role of representation of 'innocent' in the process. Representation of 'innocent' refers to a psychological threshold for deciding someone's innocence (no fault or sin) in a general sense. The functions as a threshold for a legal decision of 'beyond a reasonable doubt (BRD)' and the individual threshold (IT), regarded as a standard for judgment of guilt established by law and an estimate of an individual's threshold, respectively, were compared. This study used a 2×2 complete factorial design in which the verdict category (guilty/innocent vs. guilty/not guilty) and the defendant's likelihood of guilt (low vs. high) were manipulated. Data from 137 lay-people who voluntarily participated in the online experiment was analyzed. The experiment's procedure was in the order of measuring 'representation of innocent' and the likelihood of guilt of an accused, presenting one of four trial vignettes, and obtaining legal decisions (verdict confidence and estimation of the likelihood of guilt for the defendant). As a result, it was found that the verdict category did not significantly affect the legal decision of layperson. However, the guilty verdict rate of the 'guilty/innocent' condition tended to be higher than those of the 'guilty/not guilty' condition. The layperson's representation of 'innocent' and the verdict category had an interaction effect on the difference between BRD and IT (threshold change) at the significance level of .1. In the 'guilty/innocent' condition, the threshold change varying with layperson's representation of 'innocent' was larger than in the 'guilty/not guilty' condition. In comparing the function of BRD and IT, IT significantly predicted the lay person's legal decision at the significance level of .1 by interacting with the likelihood of guilt for the defendant. Therefore, it could be said that IT was a better threshold estimator than BRD. The implication of this study is that it provided experimental evidence for the effect of the verdict category of lay-participation trial in Korea, which is a problem often raised among lawyers, and suggested logical reasoning and empirical grounds for the psychological mechanism of the possible effect.