This article describes the development of a new clinical instrument for use in assessments of adult criminal defendants' competence to proceed to adjudication, the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool–Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA). The MacCAT-CA was derived from a more comprehensive research instrument (MacArthur Structured Assessment of Competencies of Criminal Defendants; Hoge, Bonnie, Poythress, Monahan, & Eisenberg, 1997) on the basis of considerations of face validity for use in legal contexts, psychometric analyses, and advice from mental health experts who reviewed an earlier prototype. This article presents the results from an National Institute of Mental Health-sponsored validation study that investigated the psychometric properties of the MacCAT-CA.

Citation
Richard J. Bonnie et al., Psychometric Properties of the Macarthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA), 10 Psychological Assessment 435–443 (1998).