Competency Restoration Observatory

Five states, one question: does anyone found incompetent to stand trial actually get evaluated or restored within the time the law, or a federal court, requires?

Built and maintained by Sudhanshu Rai, an independent researcher; not affiliated with any court, agency, or party. Descriptive measurement only — no causal claims.

This isn't one state's compliance page — it's five, tracked side by side, each measured against its own actual legal standard, not a shared one imposed for comparability's sake. Pick a state above, or see how they compare.
Pick a state

Five states, five different legal standards

WashingtonFederal consent decree (Trueblood v. DSHS) — monthly restoration wait-time series.
OregonFederal 7-day aid-and-assist admission standard, with district-court-ordered contempt fines for non-compliance.
ColoradoFederal consent decree (Center for Legal Advocacy v. Barnes), tiered 7-/28-day deadlines, special-master monitored.
TexasNo binding admission deadline until a July 2026 federal ruling ordered one, now under appeal.
CaliforniaA state-court mandate (Stiavetti v. Clendenin), not a federal decree — 28-day placement standard.
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Compare, download, or read the methodology

CompareFive states, side by side — grouped by legal mechanism, never averaged.
DataEvery dataset behind this site, full schema, CSV download.
AboutWho built this, how it's funded, and how a number gets from a PDF to this site.
Status

Why this isn't one number

This site never computes or displays a 5-state average of any kind — the states measure genuinely different things, on different legal clocks, using different metrics and reporting cadences. Each state's own page shows its own real trend, sourced and citable; Compare puts them side by side only where a comparison is genuinely valid.
Use the data

Cite, download, or get in touch

Cite this dataset

Competency Restoration Observatory (2026). Competency Restoration Observatory — full project [dataset index]. competencyrestoration.org · data current through see each state's own page · page generated August 2026 · concept DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21436450 (always resolves to the latest dataset version — a version-pinned DOI matching this exact data window follows at the next Zenodo release).

Every figure regenerates from the public source reports by code — fully reproducible. The Zenodo deposit already includes real, MIT-licensed extraction code for the frozen Washington/Oregon study (an extraction pipeline plus its own verification gate) — but this dashboard's own full 5-state codebase (adapted from that study's code, plus Colorado, Texas, and California from scratch) is a separate, not-yet-public repository. A dedicated "Build & Replicate" walkthrough page and that public release are both planned but not yet published.

Data, code & contact

Open dataset + WA/OR code (Zenodo) Full dashboard code (public release planned) Email the maintainer Subscribe to corrections (RSS)

Researchers, clinicians, monitors, and reporters welcome — especially if you know of more recent source reports for this state. Every correction to an already-published number is logged on the Changelog page and in this RSS feed — nothing changes silently.