Sociodemographic, Clinical and Criminal Characteristics of Offenders Disqualified from Conscription with Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Sample from Türkiye

ABSTRACT

The study examines the complex assessment of criminal culpability in individuals with ASPD, specifically regarding their ineligibility for conscription due to challenges obeying military regulations and endangering fellow soldiers. The research centers on 135 cases diagnosed with ASPD who sought exemption from conscription in Türkiye between 2018 and 2022, comparing their socio-demographic, clinical, and criminal characteristics. Significantly, individuals with severe ASPD demonstrate a correlation with increased rates of employment (p = .006), a greater frequency of planned offenses (p = .033), and a heightened frequency of criminal records (p < .001). Both groups with ASPD display self-harming tendencies, yet sASPD cases are more often subjected to exemption decisions prior to conscription (84.1%), in contrast to ASPD cases where disqualification arises primarily during conscription (59.1%) (p < .001). The rate of disqualification from conscription is greater among individuals with ASPD during service, particularly for severe cases earlier on. In both groups, younger individuals who live with their parents (p = .046) seek addiction treatment more frequently. sASPD individuals tend to have more criminal records, and exemption decisions often precede conscription. The study highlights differences between ASPD and sASPD, planned offenses, impulsivity, addiction treatment-seeking behavior, and frequency of criminal records as critical elements to consider when evaluating disqualifications for conscription in these groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Criminal responsibility
• forensic psychiatry
• military psychiatry
• personality disorder

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Council of Forensic Medicine Türkiye for study process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Ethics committee permission dated 22.02.2023 and numbered 21,589,509/2023/123 was obtained from the Council of Forensic Medicine Türkiye for the study.

Informed consent

Informed consent was not obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The data of the study participants were retrospectively scanned and used. In order to use these data, permission of the Scientific Committee was obtained from the Ministry of Justice, Council of Forensic Medicine and all national and international legal rules were complied with.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.