Pretrial evaluations for criminal courts: contemporary models of service delivery

Pretrial forensic evaluations are provided for the criminal courts throughout the United States. A variety of models of service delivery exists, and these models vary in ways that are important to the organization and finding of state mental health services. The first part of this paper describes several models of service delivery, which vary primarily in terms of centrality (central state institution vs. community service provider) and the use of inpatient vs. outpatient procedures. The second part compares these models on a number of important measures, including cost and efficiency. The final section of the paper indicates the importance of specialized forensic training and describes important components of such training.