This Article focuses on unifying the protocol for state competency evaluations, but with special concerns about undiagnosed FASD and developmental immaturity in adolescents. States do not mandate any process whereby psychometric tests are first performed prior to psychiatric mental status evaluations, often causing disparities in evaluations which might easily be avoided in court proceedings. Adding to the complications in current competency evaluations are recent studies from Canada and Australia identifying exceptionally high rates of FASD in incarcerated adolescents following multi-disciplinary teams’ studies directed at identifying FASD. If these studies’ rates of FASD turn out to be similar for children in the U.S. juvenile justice system, then systemic reform is called for as we are failing to identify this congenital condition when adolescents enter the system and then continue on into the adult criminal system without recognition of their prenatal exposure to alcohol.

中文翻译：

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青少年能力并发症：协议、未满足的需求、发育不成熟、胎儿酒精谱系障碍 (FASD) 和合并症

本文重点关注统一国家能力评估方案，但特别关注未确诊的 FASD 和青少年发育不成熟。各州并未强制要求在进行精神心理状态评估之前首先进行心理测量测试，这往往会导致评估结果出现差异，而这在法庭诉讼中很容易避免。加拿大和澳大利亚最近的研究发现，在多学科小组针对 FASD 进行研究后，被监禁青少年的 FASD 发病率异常高，这使当前能力评估变得更加复杂。如果这些研究表明美国青少年司法系统中儿童的胎儿酒精谱系谱系障碍（FASD）发生率相似，那么就需要进行系统性改革，因为当青少年进入该系统并继续进入成人犯罪系统时，我们无法识别这种先天性疾病。没有意识到他们在产前接触过酒精。