MacCAT-CA Interview Booklet (pkg 10)

The MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA) can be used to evaluate a defendant's capacity to proceed to adjudication and is appropriate for use with both felony and misdemeanour defendants.

It is a 22-item structured interview for the pre-trial assessment of adjudicative competence, which uses a vignette format and objectively scored questions to standardise the measurement of three competence-related abilities: understanding, reasoning, and appreciation.

The MacCAT-CA Interview Booklet facilitates easy administration, recording, and scoring of the defendant's responses.

Items appear on the right-hand page of the Booklet, whilst the facing page contains scoring criteria for that item. The examiner assigns a value of 0, 1, or 2 based on the scoring criteria. The final page of the Booklet is a Scoring Summary form for transferring and summing the item scores for Understanding, Reasoning, and Appreciation.

The MacCAT-CA Interview Booklet also provides space for examiners to record case-specific observations that may be relevant for follow-up.