FORENSIC MENTAL-HEALTH CLINICAL-EVALUATION - AN ANALYSIS OF INTERSTATE AND INTERSYSTEMIC DIFFERENCES

Forensic mental health evaluation systems have undergone major changes during the past two decades, and the variability of sen,ice delivery systems across states is significant. We compared assessments of compe tence to stand trial and criminal responsibility in three states with different systems for forensic mental health evaluations: Michigan, Oh io, and Virginia. Although all three states use comparable legal crite ria to judge competence and criminal responsibility, we found large, s tatistically significant differences among the states in the proportio n of defendants referred for evaluation who were assessed as incompete nt or not criminally responsible. In addition significant differences were found in the diagnostic and offense categories of defendants refe rred for evaluation. Our findings suggest that the structure of a syst em for providing forensic evaluation services may significantly affect both the group of individuals referred for evaluation as well as eval uation outcome.