THE COMPETENCE-RELATED ABILITIES OF WOMEN CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS

A new research instrument, the MacArthur Structured Assessment of Comp etencies of Criminal Defendants (MacSAC-CD), was administered to three groups of women defendants: those adjudicated incompetent and committ ed to forensic hospitals for treatment (n = 38), jail inmates receivin g mental health treatment (n = 18) who had not been adjudicated incomp etent, and randomly selected jail inmates (n = 50). Measures of the co mpetence-related abilities of understanding and reasoning were found t o have satisfactory indices of internal consistency (coefficient alpha ), and all measures correlated in the expected direction with measures of global psychopathology, psychoticism, and verbal cognitive functio ning. Between-group mean scores were all in the expected direction and were statistically significant for four of seven measures. No differe nces in MacSAC-CD performance were found in comparisons of male and fe male defendants who had been adjudicated incompetent, nor were differe nces found in the performance of male and female jail inmates.