Juvenile Fitness for Trial in Queensland: Formal Report

The Law Commission in the United Kingdom (2010) highlighted that issues of competence were more acute for juvenile offenders than for adults. The Commission referred to the MacArthur Juvenile Competence Study from the United States, which investigated differences in adjudicative competence ability between adults and adolescents (Grisso et al., 2003). That study determined that juveniles, aged below 16 years, are more likely to have competence-related impairments in comparison with older adolescents and young adults.