Clinical Evaluations for Juveniles' Competence to Stand Trial:
A Guide for Legal Professionals

by Thomas Grisso, PhD, ABPP

Publication Date: June 2005
Pages: 56
Size/Binding: 6" x 9" Paperbound
ISBN: 1568870973
Price: $18.95 (plus shipping: $4.50 in US. FL residents add 7% sales tax)
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ABOUT THIS BOOK:
What special issues arise in making judgments about juveniles' competence (fitness) to stand trial due to their mental disorders or immaturity?   How should mental health examiners be evaluating juveniles' competence, and what can legal professionals learn from those evaluations?   These are relatively new questions for juvenile courts, where the concept of competence to stand trial has almost no precedent before it began to arise in the mid-1990s.   Now it is one of the juvenile court's most perplexing issues.

Clinical Evaluations for Juveniles' Competence to Stand Trial: A Guide for Legal Professionals is the first authoritative text available to address these questions. Developed by the MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, this slim monograph offers the best advice on this topic currently available , based on extensive psychological research and the perspectives of national panels of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and juvenile forensic mental health clinicians who contributed to this project. Brief sections describe the current state of laws pertaining to juveniles' competence to stand trial, a developmental perspective on the question, the specific methods that mental health professionals can employ when performing such evaluations with juveniles, and ways to use and challenge the results of their evaluations.

The guide's concepts and methods parallel a companion volume for forensic clinicians (Evaluating Juveniles' Adjudicative Competence: A Guide for Clinical Practice, Product Code EJC, $44.95 each, www.prpress.com/books/ejc.html ).   Together these new texts offer the potential for a cross-disciplinary understanding of the legal, clinical, and developmental issues involved when courts are deciding about juveniles' competence as trial defendants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Thomas Grisso, PhD, ABPP, is Professor of Psychiatry, Director of Psychology, and Coordinator of the Law and Psychiatry Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The present work is a product of the collaborative efforts of the members of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, for which Dr. Grisso directed a research project on juveniles' adjudicative competence from 1998 to 2004. Dr. Grisso is Executive Director of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, and has authored a number of texts on forensic evaluations (e.g., Forensic Evaluation of Juveniles, 1998 and Evaluating Competencies, 2nd ed., 2003). His research and writing to support the quality of mental health professionals' evaluations for courts have been recognized by distinguished contribution awards from the American Psychological Association (1994), the American Board of Professional Psychology (2002), and most recently with the Isaac Ray Award from the American Psychiatric Association (2005).

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
        The Problem
        The Purpose of This Guide
Part I - The Legal Standard and Process
        What Is the Legal Standard?
        What Is the Legal Process?
Part II - Taking a Developmental Perspective
        What Mental Disorders Are Relevant?
        What Is Meant By "Immaturity" as a
        Threat to Competence?
        Does Immaturity Make a Difference?
        What Is Different About Evaluating Youths'
        Competence to Stand Trial?
Part III - Understanding Clinicians' Evaluations
        The Referral
        Examiner's Preparation for the Evaluation
        Evaluating Youths' Clinical and Developmental History and Status
        Evaluating Youths' Competency Abilities
Part IV - Using Clinicians' Opinions
        Examiners' Reports and Opinions
        Mental Disorders and Disabilities and Their
        Implications for Competence
        Developmental Immaturity and Its Implications
        for Competence
        Responses to Findings of Incompetence