[Fatalities in the course of hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital (paragraph 63 StGb)].

On the average, every tenth proband dies during his compulsory referral to a psychiatric hospital decreed by a court of law. The mortality rate among sentenced persons is not only much higher than that of inmates of a normal prison, but is also much higher than among patients of psychiatric hospitals not compulsorily referred by court. Those who died during hospitalisation, were fully exculpated more often than those who survived at the end of their term; furthermore, they had served their sentences on the average for a longer time than the survivors. The combination of mental disease, legal culpability and imprisonment exercises a particularly dramatic effect on the suicide rate.