ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general overview of criminal forensic assessment, focusing on issues related to standards, procedures, and evaluation practices relevant to competency, insanity, and future risk. It focuses on risk assessments conducted within the criminal forensic context, with a specific focus on those assessments conducted for the purposes of transfer or release. Criminal forensic assessment is a subcategory of forensic mental health assessment and refers to evaluations conducted by mental health professionals to inform the court about a specific psycholegal issue relevant to a criminal case. Criminal forensic evaluations are distinct from evaluations for civil cases, family court evaluations, or those conducted for other reasons but used in legal cases. The evaluation of criminal responsibility/insanity, for instance, requires a retrospective analysis of the mental state of a defendant at the time the offense was committed. Nomothetic competence assessment instruments include the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Criminal Adjudication and the Evaluation of Competence to Stand Trial – Revised.
