Forensic psychology
[1][2][3] Forensic psychology includes research on various psychology-law topics, such as: jury selection, reducing systemic racism in criminal law, eyewitness testimony, evaluating competency to stand trial, or assessing military veterans for service-connected disability compensation.
[6] In the first decade of the 20th century, Hugo Münsterberg, the first director of Harvard's psychological laboratory and a student of Wilhelm Wundt, one of the first experimental psychologists,[2][7] authored On the Witness Stand.
[13] The 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,[14] was the first where the Supreme Court of the United States referenced expert opinions by psychologists.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that psychologists had the legal authority to testify as medical experts about mental illness.
The case started after the parents of Jason Daubert and Eric Schuller, sued Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals after their children were born with serious birth defects due to a drug called Bendectin.
The Ninth Circuit had only granted summary judgment because the plaintiffs' proffered evidence that were accepted as a reliable technique by scientist.
In the 1980s, Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, published a series of papers on false confessions.
[21] The 20th-century psychologist William Stern, conducted numerous experiments on eyewitness testimony, credibility, consistency, and the influence of leading questions in court.
For example, many recent docuseries on Netflix feature forensic psychological content, including Making a Murderer and Sins of our Mother.
[31] Forensic psychology may be utilized in five major areas (police and public safety, law, crime and delinquency, victimology and victim services, and corrections) and two sub-areas (family and schools).
[36] There is great debate about whether these Forensic Psychological evaluations constitute as health care treatment, with most arguments claiming they do not.
[37] A forensic psychologist is responsible for assessing and reporting results of an evaluation, but does not make decisions on "ultimate issues", such as competence to stand trial or service-connected disability for U.S. military veterans.
[39] Forensic psychologists may be asked to administer psychological interventions to those requiring or requesting services in both criminal and civil cases.
Regarding criminal cases, forensic psychologists can work with individuals who have already been sentenced to reduce the likelihood of repeating their offense.
Other treatments are frequently put together in these case, especially for substance use disorder, sex offenders, mental illness, or anger management.
[40] Providing consultations allows forensic psychologists to apply psychological expertise and research to help law enforcement, attorneys, and other legal professionals or proceedings better understand human behavior (e.g. criminal, witness, victim, jury), civil processes, effects of trauma or other life events, and so on.
[41] If working as a consultant, a forensic psychologist can be involved in legal proceedings through responsibilities such as reviewing court records (such as a defendant's psychosocial history or assessing mitigating or aggravating factors in a case), serving as a jury consultant (organizing focus groups, shadow juries, mock juries, or helping with the voir dire proceedings), and assessment without testimony (in which results of a defendant's evaluation are not disclosed to the prosecution team, allowing the defense team to develop a defense strategy), among others.
[41][42] Essentially, consultations can take many forms, including the common ones below: Expert testimony about matters relating to psychology is also an area in which forensic psychologists play an active role.
[51] The requirements that must be met for forensic psychologists to be considered expert witnesses include clinical psychology expertise and knowledge of the laws that have jurisdiction over the court they are to testify.
Attorneys have the opportunity to raise a challenge to the admissibility of the expert's testimony if there are questions about its relevance, or its validity and reliability (in the United States - the rules vary by country and jurisdiction).
These professionals may be employed in various settings, such as: colleges and universities, research institutes, and government, private, or mental health agencies.
Some famous psychologists in the field include Scott Lilienfeld, who was widely known for his scholarship on psychopathology and psychopathy; Saul Kassin, who is known for studying false confessions; Jennifer Skeem, who is known for studying justice-involved people with mental illness; Michael Saks, who is known for his contributions to jury research and improvements to forensic science; Barbara Spellman, who is known for her cognitive psychology-law work as well as for her open science leadership; and Elizabeth Loftus and Gary Wells, who are both known for their research on eyewitness memory.
Potential causes of incompetence include brain damage, the occurrence of a psychotic episode, a mental disorder, or a developmental disability.
[34][43] According to legal principles of insanity, it is only acceptable to judge, find someone criminally responsible, and punish a defendant if that individual was sane at the time of the crime.
Mens rea, translated to "guilty mind", indicates that the individual exhibited free will and some intent to do harm at the time of the crime.
[60] Imposition of the death penalty often requires a consideration of "future dangerousness," for which risk assessment can play a vital role.
[5] These guidelines involve reminders that forensic psychologists should value integrity, impartiality, and fairness, as well as avoid conflicts of interest when possible.
Other ethical guidelines involve receiving informed consent from clients before communicating information regarding their treatment or evaluations, respecting and acknowledging privacy, confidentiality, and privilege among clients, remaining impartial and objective when involved in a trial, and weighing the moral and ethical costs of complying with any court orders that may conflict with professional standards.
Forensic psychology finds this information useful to know when and how authority can affect a situation, but mostly to know the boundaries that research can be pushed and when something is deemed unethical.
