Criminal responsibility (or insanity) evaluations require forensic clinicians to reconstruct a defendant's decision-making abilities, behavioral control, and emotional state at the time of the criminal act. Forensic evaluators are ultimately tasked to evaluate whether an individual had the capacity to understand right from wrong, and in some jurisdictions, determine whether the defendant lacked substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law as a result of a threshold condition (e.g., mental illness). Insanity evaluations are inherently complex, because they require the clinician to determine someone's mental state at some point in the past (weeks, months, or even years). Recent research on insanity evaluations underscores significant problems with the reliability and validity of these evaluations. However, technological advances including social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), mandating that law enforcement videotape interrogations, and the use of body and dashboard cameras can aid clinicians in improving the precision and quality of insanity evaluations. This article discusses practical guidelines and ethics-related concerns regarding the use of technology to improve the objectivity of criminal responsibility evaluations. Advances in technology have led to changes in health care practice, which in turn has improved the evaluation and treatment of individuals with mental disorders. As an illustrative example, advances in telecommunication have led to the proliferation of videoconferencing (i.e., real-time, audio-video communication) in delivering psychiatric and psychological services to increase availability of mental health care in rural areas that are often devoid of such services.sup 1 /sup Available research suggests that in most instances, there is little diminution in overall quality of services when using telepsychiatry,sup 2 /sup including for those individuals receiving forensic services.sup 3 /sup Further improvements in technology will improve availability of mental health services within traditionally underserved areas. One such underserved area is correctional mental healthsup 4 /sup: the implementation of telepsychiatry has led to efficacious treatment of individuals with posttraumatic stress disordersup 5 /sup or depressionsup 6 /sup and of incarcerated adolescents.sup 7 /sup The implications for mental health treatment have been fairly well researched with calls for the expansion of telepsychiatry in mental health services. Even though there has been a proliferation of technologically based services for the treatment of mental disorders, the application of technology to improve the quality of criminal forensic evaluations has been understudied, and perhaps, underused. The use of technology in forensic evaluations offers several potential advantages including: cost savings, the ability to decrease the census in state forensic hospitals by facilitating the completion of the evaluation, greater access to a wider and more diverse range of experts and improving the flow of court dockets involving individuals with mental illnesses.sup 8 /sup Some jurisdictions have reportedly been using various telecommunication methods to complete competency-to-proceed-to-trial evaluations.sup 9 /sup Comparable results via telepsychiatry and in-person interviews were found using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication, and the Georgia Court Competency Test.sup 9 , 10 /sup It seems, then, that by using technology in forensic evaluations, the quality of relevant and specialized assessment tools, along with greater accessibility for conducting interviews and gathering collateral information, would not be exchanged for improved timeliness of evaluations. In fact, the implementation of telepsychiatry has been proposed as a potential solution to a shortage of forensic evaluators in South Africa.sup 11 /sup Although videoconferencing is useful and likely an advantageous modality for gathering clinically relevant data (e.g., via interviews with defendants and third-party observers), the commentary that follows focuses primarily on addressing the potential benefits and ethics-related concerns regarding the use of technology, such as social media, mandated videotaped police interrogations, and body and dash cam videos, to obtain additional information about a defendant for the purpose of evaluating criminal responsibility. Reviewing and integrating collateral sources of information whenever possible is recognized as standard practice in conducting insanity evaluations.sup 12
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