Jail Diversion for Misdemeanors Can Be a First Step to Improve the Competency to Stand Trial Process

[摘要] trial competencycompetence to stand trialcompetency restorationjail diversionThe United States is witnessing a slow-moving tsunami disrupting the mental health and criminal justice systems. Bloated correctional mental health systems are overwhelmed by their psychiatric caseloads, publicly funded psychiatric hospitals have shrunk in capacity, increasingly occupied by forensic patients found not competent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, while under-resourced community mental health services are inaccessible to many people they were intended to serve.1 The professional literature outlines multiple factors that are postulated to have contributed to the current dilemma. These include deinstitutionalization from formerly large public psychiatric hospitals, inadequate funding of Community Mental Health Centers, prioritization of penal solutions to substance abuse problems during the war on drugs campaigns, tightening of requirements for civil commitment statutes for psychiatric hospitalization, and pressure on inpatient psychiatrists to create room to admit more acutely ill patients by discharging still symptomatic patients before they are fully ready to return to their communities.

[学科分类] 儿科学

[关键词] trial competency;competence to stand trial;competency restoration;jail diversion