The impact of misdemeanor arrests on forensic mental health services: A state-wide review of Virginia sanity evaluations.

Objective: We examined the prevalence of criminal defendants facing only misdemeanor charges and referred for forensic mental health evaluations of legal sanity (criminal responsibility) in a state-wide sample of sanity reports. We sought to describe this population of defendants, particularly as compared to defendants facing felony charges and referred for evaluation of legal sanity.

Hypotheses: We hypothesized that, among those referred for sanity evaluations, defendants facing only misdemeanor charges would have higher rates of serious mental illness than would defendants charged with felonies, as evidenced by their mental status during the evaluation and at the time of alleged offenses.

Competency to stand trial evaluations: A state-wide review of court-ordered reports.

Competence to stand trial (CST) evaluations are a critical part of certain criminal proceedings, and competence-related evaluation and treatment are an increasing part of public mental health services. Whereas more research describes the defendants undergoing competence evaluations, less research has examined the actual reports detailing those competence evaluations. This study reviewed 3,644 court-ordered CST evaluation reports submitted by 126 evaluators in Virginia since Virginia initiated an oversight system allowing for comprehensive review.

Insanity findings and evaluation practices: A state-wide review of court-ordered reports.

Evaluations of legal sanity are some of the most complex and consequential mental health evaluations that forensic clinicians perform for the courts. Thus, there is strong reason to monitor the wide-scale process and conclusions of sanity evaluations. In this study, we review 1,111 court-ordered sanity evaluation reports submitted by 74 evaluators in Virginia from the first year after the state initiated an oversight system that allowed for such comprehensive review.