Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court. Volumes include the following helpful features: - Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations - Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls - Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes - Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference - Helpful gloassary of key terms for the particular topic In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court. Volumes include the following helpful features: - Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations - Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls - Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes - Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference - Helpful gloassary of key terms for the particular topic In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.

Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has grown into a specialization informed by research and professional guidelines. This series presents up-to-date information on the most important and frequently conducted forms of FMHA. The 19 topical volumes address best approaches to practice for particular types of evaluation in the criminal, civil, and juvenile/family areas. Each volume contains a thorough discussion of the relevant legal and psychological concepts, followed by a step-by-step description of the assessment process from preparing for the evaluation to writing the report and testifying in court. Volumes include the following helpful features: - Boxes that zero in on important information for use in evaluations - Tips for best practice and cautions against common pitfalls - Highlighting of relevant case law and statutes - Separate list of assessment tools for easy reference - Helpful glossary of key terms for the particular topic In making recommendations for best practice, authors consider empirical support, legal relevance, and consistency with ethical and professional standards. These volumes offer invaluable guidance for anyone involved in conducting or using forensic evaluations.

In recent years, juvenile courts and juvenile attorneys have come to rely heavily on mental health professionals for evaluations of youths in delinquency cases. Evaluation questions include the youth's competence to stand trial, competence to waive Miranda rights prior to giving a confession, the risk of future violence, rehabilitation needs, and whether he or she should be tried as a juvenile or an adult.This book offers detailed guidance in performing evaluations for all of these purposes. Written for clinicians but also useful to lawyers and others dealing with such evaluations, each chapter carefully defines the legal and clinical questions for a particular type of evaluation, describes the evaluation process in detail, reviews relevant assessment methods, and discusses issues in interpretation and testimony. The descriptions are guided by current legal requirements and the latest research results in the behavioral and medical sciences, blended with practical advice derived from the author's 25 years of experience in the forensic evaluation of juveniles. The introductory chapter examines the historical, legal, scientific, and professional contexts in which clinicians engage in forensic evaluations of juveniles, and the closing chapter offers a comprehensive review of the ethical and professional issues involved in juvenile forensic practice.

Psychologists have always played a key role in determining how the juvenile justice system assesses and treats young offenders. Recent neuropsychological findings shows that there are important developmental differences between juvenile offenders, such as varying levels of maturity, risk potential, and amenability to treatment, not to mention individualized personality traits and possible mental disorders. Psychologists must therefore strive for targeted rehabilitation services to avoid unfair treatment and redirect youth to healthier life choices. This book is a practical guide that will help psychologists answer important psycho-legal questions to properly assess and treat juvenile offenders. These guidelines primarily focus on disposition evaluations, which describe adolescent offenders and paths to rehabilitation, and transfer evaluations, which determine whether juveniles should be moved to adult courts. Psychological assessments can greatly influence a judge s decision, so this book will help forensic clinicians consider important external factors, such as local laws and the political climate, and present assessment data to judges in a thorough, understandable manner. This book will also be valuable for attorneys, judges, criminologists, and legal scholars who want to understand the psychological science behind juvenile assessment.

This book offers a conceptual model for understanding the nature of legal competencies. The model is interpreted to assist mental health professionals in designing and performing assessments for legal competencies defined in criminal and civil law, and to guide research that will improve the practice of evaluations for legal competencies. A special feature is the book's evaluative review of specialized forensic assessment instruments for each of several legal competencies. Three-fourths of the 37 instruments reviewed in this second edition are new.

Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.

It is well known that many children and adolescents entering the juvenile justice system suffer from serious mental disorders. Yet until now, few resources have been available to help mental health and juvenile justice professionals accurately identify the mental health needs of the youths in their care. Filling a crucial gap, this volume offers a practical primer on screening and assessment together with in-depth reviews of over 20 widely used instruments. Comprehensive and timely, it brings together leading experts to provide authoritative guidance in this challenging area of clinical practice. Grounded in extensive research and real world practical experience, this is an indispensable reference for clinical and forensic psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists, as well as juvenile justice administrators and others who work with youths in the justice system. An informative resource for students, it is an ideal supplemental text for graduate-level courses.