ABSTRACT
It is a long-held principle within the adult criminal court that individuals charged with crimes must be competent to proceed to adjudication (competent to stand trial), meaning that they must be able to adequately understand and participate in legal proceedings against them. Although historically the requirement that defendants must be competent did not apply to juvenile defendants, over the past several decades courts have increasingly required that juvenile defendants must be competent to proceed to adjudication (Scott & Grisso, 2005). This trend has lead to growth in the numbers of competency evaluations requested for juveniles (Grisso & Quinlan, 2005; Redding & Frost, 2001).
