ABSTRACT

The format and content of competency to stand trial reports are influenced by traditional practices of psychological assessment and report writing that are outmoded for forensic practice. Many such reports include irrelevant, prejudicial information that unnecessary invades the privacy of the examinee, in violation of APA ethical guideline 4.04, and may also contain much data that are unreliable and prejudicial. Traditional report formats are organized around the psychologist’s concerns and topic areas rather than what is most useful to the trier of fact and parties. This article discusses these issues and offers a rationale for radically revising the standard competency to stand trial (CST) report template to make it more focused and objective for readers, more ethically compliant, and with less prejudicial information that may compromise the objectivity of the trier of fact. It also substantially reduces the amount of time required of report-writing.

摘要

受审能力报告的格式和内容受到心理评估和报告撰写的传统做法的影响，这些做法在法医实践中已过时。许多此类报告包含无关的、有偏见的信息，这些信息不必要地侵犯了考生的隐私，违反了 APA 道德准则 4.04，并且还可能包含许多不可靠和有偏见的数据。传统的报告格式是围绕心理学家的关注点和主题领域组织的，而不是对事实和当事人最有用的内容。本文讨论了这些问题，并提供了从根本上修改标准受审能力 (CST) 报告模板的理由，以使其对读者更加集中和客观，更符合道德规范，并且可能会损害事实审判者的客观性的偏见信息较少。它还大大减少了撰写报告所需的时间。