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Columbia-Presbyterian. George had been provided a desk, a computer,and a phone in a proper office he shared with just one of his fellow interns, who also had her own desk, computer, and phone. In this office, he told me offhandedly, there was a private bathroom. (With this pronouncement—he knew all seven Kings County adult-track interns shared one room, you could barely call it an office—I gave him a look, and he proceeded to inform me that, also, the toilet was gold plated.) As he and I went back and forth over whose turn it was to walk the dog, I wondered silently whether Kings County Hospital had been the best second choice.
    In the end, Scott Brent and I would agree on only a few things: there was a lot of paperwork to do in those first days, the internship would indeed become demanding, and hospital orientation—other than being a study in the endemic absurdity of bureaucracy—was a complete waste of time. On other matters, it would be harder to see eye to eye.

CHAPTER TWO
    I CHOSE FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY AS MY FIRST ROTATION , though I had absolutely no idea, and by that I mean none whatsoever, just what it might entail—my imaginings about it culled from all the movies I had ever seen (many) and all the television shows I had ever watched (more) that featured cops and criminals. I’d also found myself wanting to work with Dr. Sheldon Wolfe, Kings County forensic psychologist, since I’d interviewed for the internship with him the previous winter. Dr. Wolfe was in his mid-sixties and salty, short and trim and bald. He was a study in contradictions: an Orthodox Jew with a Ph.D. but the demeanor of an Irish policeman. He half reminded me of my father—the first in his family to go to college—his similar gruff mannerisms and too frequent use of the double negative preempting his education like a disclaimer. During our half hour together, Dr. Wolfe and I had talked about detective novels and police procedurals. Ours was the first interview of many I sat through that winter,and the ones that followed were predictable letdowns. Tell-me-about-your-dissertation-research. Why-did-you-decide-to-become-a-psychologist. If the rest of the forensics staff were like Dr. Wolfe, I figured I’d enjoy learning to do whatever it was they did.
    As it turned out, forensic psychology encompassed all sorts of things, most of them having to do with evaluation rather than treatment. Who knew? The forensic psychologists at Kings County spent the bulk of their time doing fitness-to-stand-trial evaluations, working not out of the hospital but in a small office on the thirteenth floor of the criminal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. They called it the court clinic.
    Fitness to stand trial concerns a defendant’s state of mind leading up to his day in court. Anyone who cannot participate in his own defense in a meaningful way is not fit to be tried. The evaluations work like this: If a defendant seems markedly bizarre—as around 60,000 arrestees annually do—it is the mandate of his attorney, or that of the judge, to refer him for a psychological evaluation. This evaluation is conducted by some combination of two psychologists or psychiatrists and is also called a competency assessment, or a 7:30. The meaningful participation required of the accused may or may not be impaired by any number of psychological problems. After a detailed interview, the investigators write brief reports that end with recommendations to the judge as to the defendant’s fitness. Ninety percent of the time, the judge goes along with the clinicians’ recommendations. If found unfit, a defendant is treated at a state hospital with medication until he becomes able to understand and make decisions about his charges. If a defendant never becomes fit and the crime is egregious enough, the state can petition to have him committed to aninstitution in lieu of trying him. For misdemeanors, a defendant may simply be released for time served after his hospitalization has