Intellectual disability: Criminality, assessment and forensic issues

Abstract Intellectual disability is of maximum interest in the forensic field. This review includes an electronic search of articles in English or Spanish registered in the Medline database with the terms FORENS* and INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY in the Title or Abstract, up until January 1, 2018, selecting those that addressed issues related to the condition's historical background and legal consideration, criminality and criminal typology, comorbidity in offenders, risk factors and recidivism, and forensic assessment, excluding articles on treatment or treatment outcomes. We identified 80 articles that fulfilled criteria for inclusion, which highlighted the special consideration historically given by the law to subjects affected by intellectual disability, their high rates of imprisonment, which discussed their relationship with violence, including sexual violence, which describe high rates of comorbidity with other psychiatric disorders, with discrepancies regarding toxic-related disorders, and lastly which reviewed these subjects’ risk factors and recidivism, as well as the forensic assessment methods. We also outline the limitations of the literature review, especially in relation to the research criteria that define intellectual disability.