Introducing the BCAT: A Tool to Aid Treatment Providers in Assessing Adjudicative Competence
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Abstract
The most frequently requested forensic evaluations are to assess a defendant's adjudicative competence, yet inefficiencies in the competence review process often lead to wasted state resources and prolonged detainment. When a judge identifies a defendant as incompetent, criminal proceedings are postponed and the defendant is typically ordered to receive competency restoration treatment. The court also schedules a hearing to review the defendant’s progress toward competence and orders a competency examiner to prepare a progress report for that hearing. If the court then determines the defendant is competent their case will proceed, otherwise the court will generally order that competency restoration treatment continue. These competency examinations and their associated court hearings typically occur in standard intervals, such as every three months. It is common for defendants to be restored to competence prior to their next scheduled court hearing, but competency examiners and courts are often not apprised of this development. This is partially due to dynamics associated with treatment providers. Though treatment providers such as psychiatrists and clinical social workers are trained in mental health issues, they are not typically trained to assess adjudicative competence. Consequently, they may inadvertently continue to provide daily competency restoration treatment to a defendant who has already been restored to competence. Such occurrences contribute to a waste of resources, unnecessarily long detainment for competency restoration treatment, and an unnecessarily long postponement of legal proceedings. This study examines whether the Bartlett Competency Assessment Tool (BCAT) could be utilized by treatment providers to assist them in predicting the recommendation of a competency examiner. If the BCAT predicts that the competency examiner will recommend to the court that a defendant is competent, a referral can be made for a competency examination to be completed ahead of schedule. In this study the BCAT accurately predicted the recommendation of the competency examiner in 25 of 27 cases. The relationship between the outcomes of the BCAT and the recommendations of the competency examiners was statistically significant, χ2 (1, N = 27) = 19.99, p < .001. Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed, including the potential of the BCAT to help states better utilize resources and reduce unnecessary treatment and detainment.
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