Competency Restoration: Use of State Hospitals, Community-Based, and Jail-Based Approaches

One of the 15 new State Mental Health Profiles reports released by NRI focuses on competency restoration. A criminal defendant who has been found incompetent to stand trial and potentially restorable must first be restored to competency before the legal process can proceed. For many states, State Mental Health Agencies (SMHAs) or their contracted providers provide competency restoration (CR) services in outpatient or inpatient settings. Inpatient CR services are provided in dedicated forensic state hospitals, dedicated forensic units in a state psychiatric hospital, general unit in state psychiatric hospitals, and private psychiatric hospitals. SMHAs provide CR services to criminal defendants charged with misdemeanors and felonies.

This new NRI State Profiles “Competency Restoration: Use of State Hospitals, Community-Based, and Jail-Based Approaches” report is available at www.nri-inc.org/profiles. This report is one of 15 new Profiles report available to the public. SMHA staff have exclusive access to additional state-by-state information that are summarized in the public reports. For more information about the State Profiles system, please e-mail [email protected].