The role of race in court-ordered pretrial psychiatric evaluations

Abstract

The current study examines whether racial differences exist for defendants referred by criminal courts for pretrial psychiatric evaluations across demographic, clinical, and criminal history variables. Compared to Caucasian defendants, African Americans were younger, less educated, diagnosed more frequently with schizophrenia, but less with mood disorders, more likely to have prior felony convictions, and more likely to be in jail at the time of the evaluation. In addition, when controlling for other factors, African American defendants were more likely to be evaluated by forensic examiners as having a mental disease or defect, but racial differences did not exist for opinions regarding the need for inpatient hospitalization, incompetency to stand trial, or responsibility at the time of the crime. Practice recommendations are discussed.

Keywords:

• Competency to stand trial
• criminal responsibility
• mental illness
• pretrial psychiatric evaluations
• race