Abstract: Objective To study criminological characteristics of female violent criminal suspects who accepted forensic psychiatry assessment. Methods Information of the suspects involved in judicial appraisal between 2000 and 2009 were collected and analyzed according to our self-made scale. Results The age of 259 suspects were between 16 and 81 years old. There were 205（79.2%） suspects who were younger than 45 years old. There were 225（86.9%） suspects who were married. There were 14 different appraisal results： schizophrenia 47.1%, without psychosis 15.4%, depression 10.4% and others 27.1%. Irresponsibility involved with 59.5%, partial responsibility 18.5% and full responsibility 22.0%. Murder were 85.7%, arson 10.4%, inflicted injury 1.9% and robbery 1.9%. A total of 191 cases resulted in death, accounting for 82.3% of all cases. In 34.9% of all cases, the victims were male spouse of the suspects. Main weapons used in the crime were cutters and other working related tools（36.3%）. There were 66.8% of all cases were with pathological motivation, 29.7% with reality motivation and 3.5% cases were with unknown motivation. Conclusion Female violent suspects in our cases often suffered from various kinds of mental diseases. Their motivations were pathological primarily. Most cases were intentional killing with family members as victim mainly. Major weapons used were daily working related tools.

Key words: forensic psychiatry, criminology, violence, female