Advances in juvenile adjudicative competence: A 10‐year update

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive review of juvenile adjudicative competence (AC) literature published between 2010 and 2019. Publications included in this article are peer‐reviewed and disseminate original research or provide new commentary on forensic evaluation, policy, or theory. The review is organized in the following sequence: (i) factors associated with juvenile AC, (ii) evaluating juvenile AC (assessment tools and techniques, quality of evaluations, evaluation recommendations), (iii) remediation (remediation recommendations), (iv) systemic issues (inconsistency in statutes and court processes, defense attorneys' concerns about AC, age‐related issues, developmental immaturity), and (v) special topics (special populations, international research). Systemic processes and variability in statutes have contributed to current concerns regarding reliability of juvenile AC evaluation and remediation. Clear and consistent standards must be developed to address these problems. Continued research is necessary to clarify how to accurately assess juvenile AC and appropriately remediate those adjudicated incompetent. Practice and policy implications as well as future directions for research are discussed.

Court-reported competence to proceed data across the United States.

“…Finally, whereas these data provide a conservative snapshot of adult CTP referrals at the national level, we did not account for all municipalities, nor did we include military courts or juvenile referrals in our data collection. As noted by Cunningham (2020), scholars have largely overlooked juvenile CTP evaluation and restoration programs, a missed opportunity considering that these cases are rife with policy and practice considerations analogous to their adult counterparts.…”

Functional Deficits in Juveniles Evaluated for Adjudicative Competence

“…The lack of research on developmental immaturity (DI), beyond the proxy of age, in youth referred for evaluation of juvenile AC is a particular limitation. Although best practice recommendations are that DI be noted as an acceptable predicate, or basis, for incompetence in youth (Larson & Grisso, 2011) and 15 of 37 states with juvenile specific AC statutes explicitly include DI as an accepted predicate for incompetence (Panza et al, 2020), the field has not yet developed a reliable way to measure the construct (Cunningham, 2020), particularly in clinical evaluations. What we know about DI, in particular associated deficits in abstract thinking, risk appraisal, and reasoning (see Kemp et al, 2017; Shulman & Cauffman, 2013), has clear implications for youth’s AC.…”