Offenders in a silent world: hearing impairment and deafness in relation to criminality, incompetence, and insanity.

Hearing impairment is so often an invisible disability that it does not often enter the awareness of those whose senses are intact. A textbook knowledge of the physiology and pathology of hearing does not prepare the clinician to cope with a hearing-impaired family member, friend, or colleague, with whom we feel embarrassed, lest our raised voices attract too much attention. We are even less prepared to evaluate or treat hearing-impaired persons in the course of our professional activities. Yet hearing impairment is common, and the profoundly deaf probably suffer mental disorders at a rate in excess of that of their hearing peers. Profound deafness, the absence of functional or remediable hearing, is extremely disabling. Profound deafness that occurs prior to complete acquisition of verbal language is socially and psychiatrically devastating. , · Such deafness, also known as prelingual deafness, is believed to result in uneven, incomplete, or arrested personality developmentl· 4 and behavioral disturbances, S the understanding of which is complicated by the natural language barrier. Prelingually deaf offenders are said to have special problems within the criminal justice system,6-9 analogous in some respects to the diagnostic difficulties known to accompany such deafness. ' '2 At least since the late nineteenth century, commentators have questioned whether hearing impairment is associated with criminality. The legal status of the "deaf-mute" defendant has been coupled with that of the mentally disordered for centuries. Observations on these issues are scattered throughout the writings of disparate disciplines, and we are unaware of efforts to systematize the inconclusive and sometimes conflicting findings. In this article, we touch upon the historical legal status of the deaf-mute defendant, present data on a study of deaf defendants admitted to a maximum security psychiatric facility, and review studies exploring possible relationships between hearing impairment and adult criminality and between hearing impairment and juvenile delinquency. We bear no pretension that this is a