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- Title
Insanity findings and evaluation practices: A state-wide review of court-ordered reports.
- Authors
O. Gardner, Brett; C. Murrie, Daniel; N. Torres, Angela
- Abstract
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. Overall, the base rate of insanity findings was 16.9%, although base rates of insanity findings among individual evaluators varied from 0% to 50%. Similarly, most evaluators cited the cognitive (rather than volitional) criteria of the insanity defense as the basis for their insanity findings, although evaluators varied in their patterns of citing these underlying insanity criteria. Our review revealed other trends in practice, such as the rarity of psychological testing (2% of cases) and the frequency of conveying conclusions in "ultimate issue" format (76%). Overall, findings reveal that a majority of reports seem reasonably consistent with practice guidelines, but also reveal some idiosyncratic practices or patterns that suggest there is opportunity for improvement.
- Subjects
UNITED States; VIRGINIA; INSANITY defense; CRIMINAL justice system; FORENSIC sciences; MENTAL health of criminals; PEOPLE with intellectual disabilities; PEOPLE with intellectual disabilities &; crime; CRIMINAL liability; MENTAL health laws; CLASSIFICATION of mental disorders; PSYCHIATRIC diagnosis; MENTAL illness; FORENSIC psychiatry; PSYCHOSES; PSYCHOLOGICAL factors; DIAGNOSIS
- Publication
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2018, Vol 36, Issue 3, p303
- ISSN
0735-3936
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1002/bsl.2344