The goal of this project is to improve evaluation and dispositional services for criminal defendants whose competence to participate in the criminal process is at issue. In a multi-state study, we will establish the basic psychometric properties of the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool- Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA) providing further information regarding its reliability and validity. We will also establish norms by measuring the distribution of MacCAT-CA scores in two populations of interest-- criminal defendants adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and randomly selected criminal defendants. Identification and publica- tion of these norms will permit forensic mental health professionals to draw appropriate clinical inferences about the abilities of defendants they examine with the MacCAT-CA relative to these references groups. States use different models to organize and deliver pre-trial forensic services. We will examine whether incompetent defendants in different types of systems obtain different MacCAT-CA scores, as a way of assessing whether different systems result in examiners adopting different thresholds for findings of incompetence. Such system differences have been hypothesized on grounds that evaluators in inpatient forensic settings may, as a function of conducting a greater number of evaluations or working daily in treatment with acutely disordered persons, develop a higher threshold for mental illness considered to impair competence than their counterparts in community- based systems, who typically conduct fewer forensic evaluations and may work daily in treatment with less acutely disturbed persons. We will also examine whether defendants adjudicated incompetent to proceed in states that require forensic evaluator training exhibit greater deficits in competence related abilities (as measured by the MacCAT-CA) than incompetent defendants in states without required forensic training.
| Marcus, David K; Poythress, Norman G; Edens, John F et al. (2010) Adjudicative competence: evidence that impairment in ""rational understanding"" is taxonic. Psychol Assess 22:716-22 |
| Edens, J F; Poythress, N G; Nicholson, R A et al. (1999) Effects of state organizational structure and forensic examiner training on pretrial competence assessments. J Behav Health Serv Res 26:140-50 |
