Oregon enacts SB 295, creating community-based competency restoration

Oregon's SB 295 took effect on June 23, 2021, enacting the most comprehensive restructuring of the state's competency restoration framework in decades. The law created a formal system of community restoration services — allowing defendants to regain fitness to proceed outside a state hospital — and removed the word "dangerousness" from the commitment statute, requiring courts to place defendants in the least restrictive clinically appropriate setting. Oregon's reforms came as the state hospital in Salem faced a federal court order over wait times for aid-and-assist commitments, and provided a model for other Western states facing similar crises.