A national survey of hospital -and community-based approaches to pretrial mental health evaluations

To document the scope of recent trends in performing pretrial mental health evaluations, telephone interviews were conducted with 157 authorities in 50 states and the District of Columbia. These authorities included forensic mental health program directors and forensic clinical professionals. In all states, evaluations were made on an outpatient basis to some extent, and 45 states used inpatient evaluations. However, only ten states relied primarily on inpatient pretrial evaluations, generally in facilities with statewide catchment areas. A total of 32 states relied primarily on outpatient evaluations, generally conducted by providers with regional or local catchment areas.