The term fitness refers to a person’s capacity to understand and fairly participate in a criminal justice process. Fitness will depend on a person’s ability to understand what will happen in the court process, to communicate their version of what happened, to tell their legal representatives how they want to be represented and to stay focused throughout the period of a trial. Someone may be unfit to stand trial due to a number of conditions and/or disability including mental illness, developmental or intellectual disability and physical disability.
