Forensic psychology
Forensic psychology is a specialized field of psychological practice that focuses on understanding human behavior and mental processes within the context of the legal system. This discipline involves a range of activities, including psychological assessment, consultation, and psychotherapy, aimed at both criminal and civil justice applications. Forensic psychologists play a crucial role by providing insights into the behaviors of individuals involved in legal proceedings, enhancing our understanding of issues such as eyewitness reliability and the psychological assessment of defendants.
The roots of forensic psychology can be traced back to the late 19th century, with early contributions addressing the complexities of memory and testimony. Over time, the field has evolved, gaining recognition and credibility, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, as psychological principles were increasingly integrated into legal contexts. Forensic psychologists often conduct evaluations related to child custody, competency, and mens rea, requiring strong clinical skills and effective communication abilities.
While some may associate forensic psychology primarily with criminal profiling, the reality is that the field encompasses much broader responsibilities. Education in forensic psychology typically requires advanced degrees, including options for dual degrees that merge psychology with law. Today, forensic psychologists may work in various settings, from private practice to academic environments, and they contribute significantly to ongoing research and policy development in areas related to criminal justice.
Forensic psychology
DEFINITION: Field of psychological practice concerned with assessment, consultation, psychotherapy, and the study of human behavior and thinking within judicial systems.
SIGNIFICANCE: Forensic psychologists play an important role in the American criminal and civil justice system, lending their understanding of human behavior and thinking to the description, explanation, prediction, and change of the behaviors of persons working for and involved with the system.
Forensic psychology is an international effort that can be traced to the 1890s and the memory experiments conducted by psychologists such as James McKeen Cattell, Alfred Binet, and William Stern, which suggested that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable and incomplete. Subsequently, comments by Sigmund Freud in 1906 suggesting that his therapeutic approach could assist Austrian judges and the publication of Hugo Münsterberg’s book On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime in 1908 popularized the notion that psychology had something to offer the legal system. Münsterberg was an outspoken advocate for the application of psychology to legal settings. He became involved in a number of criminal cases in the United States and ridiculed attorneys and judges for their reluctance to see the value of applying psychological principles and methods to the judicial process. His drive to apply psychology to the legal setting resulted in a backlash from the influential legal scholar John Henry Wigmore, who satirized Münsterberg in an article that appeared in the Illinois Law Review in 1909. As a result, psychologists’ influence within the legal system diminished.
The Practice of Psychology in Legal Settings
Psychologists continued to work within the legal system in varying capacities. In 1913, psychological services were provided to inmates at a US correctional facility for the first time, and in 1917, Lewis Terman became the first American psychologist to use psychological testing in the selection process for officers. During the 1920s, Karl Marbe became the first psychologist to testify in a German civil trial, and William Moulton Marston became the first professor of legal psychology at American University. In 1931, Harold E. Burtt published the first textbook on legal psychology.
The partnership between psychology and law began to strengthen during the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged by the publication of Legal and Criminal Psychology (1961), edited by Hans Toch, and Hans Jürgen Eysenck’s proposed theoretical account of criminal behavior in Crime and Personality (1964). During this period, Martin Reiser became the first full-time police psychologist in Los Angeles, California, and correctional psychology became recognized as a profession as the result of the efforts of Stanley Brodsky, Robert Lewinson, and Asher Pacht. Training and certification began to change as well. In 1974, the University of Nebraska established the first interdisciplinary program in psychology and law. The American Board of Forensic Psychology provided professional certification for qualified applicants.
Psychological Research and the Law
Psychologists had been recognized by the legal system for their contributions regarding the practice of psychology, but psychological research concerning the issue of eyewitness reliability continued to be largely ignored. Psychologists such as Robert Buckout, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Gary L. Wells, and Saul M. Kassin met the challenge of persuading judges, attorneys, and law-enforcement personnel that psychology as a science could benefit the legal system in regard to eyewitness as it pertained to eyewitness identifications and memory.
The 1970s and 1980s were productive decades for mounting psychological identifying the factors that influence eyewitness reliability. Wells distinguished between controllable factors in the criminal justice system that can lead to mistakes in eyewitness reports and testimonies, such as lineup identification instructions, and uncontrollable factors, such as witnesses with poor eyesight. Loftus’s book Eyewitness Testimony (1979) summarized scientific support for the idea that misinformation introduced during a witness interview can change a witness’s memory of an event. Roy Malpass and his colleagues provided evidence that cross-race identifications can interfere with witness accuracy and that biased police lineup instructions can increase identifications of innocent suspects. R. Edward Geiselman, Ronald P. Fisher, and others began to test an interview technique, the cognitive interview, that uses memory strategies to increase the amount of accurate information a witness provides without increasing errors.
Despite the growing psychological evidence questioning the reliability of eyewitness testimony, courts continued to be reluctant to provide a legal remedy. During the 1990s, forensic science began to utilize (deoxyribonucleic acid) evidence derived from skin tissue, semen, and hair samples recovered from crime scenes. DNA, when available, was strong evidence against a defendant, but it was also useful in excluding innocent persons from investigation.
In 1996, the US National Institute of Justice published a report titled Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence after Trial, which noted, among other findings, that eyewitness testimony was often key evidence against innocent defendants. At that time, the attorney general of the United States, Janet Reno, responded to the report by gathering law-enforcement personnel, attorneys, and psychologists to form the Technical Working Group on Eyewitness Evidence. The group was charged with compiling scientifically based guidelines for the handling of eyewitness evidence. The resulting work, Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement, published in 1999, provides recommendations for procedures to be followed in the collection of eyewitness statements and the conduct of identifications that minimize eyewitness error.
The successful application of psychological science to eyewitness evidence is only one example of the contributions of psychology to forensic work. In the twenty-first century, psychologists actively study many areas of human behavior related to criminal justice and forensic issues, including decision-making, police interrogations and suspect confessions, and the testimony of child witnesses.
Becoming a Forensic Psychologist
The practice of psychology, and the conduct of psychological research, by persons working in or involved with the justice system has gained credibility and influence in modern criminal and civil justice systems worldwide, making the field of a dynamic career option. A common misconception is that forensic psychologists are primarily criminal personality profilers or behavior analysts, but in reality forensic psychologists work within the criminal and civil justice system in a number of ways that may never involve profiling criminal behavior. Although there are exceptions, profiling is actually a very small, specialized area conducted predominantly by law-enforcement personnel rather than forensic psychologists.
The most important task forensic psychologists perform is the psychological assessment of people involved in the legal system. In order to accomplish this work, they must have strong clinical skills; having a legal background can be beneficial too. Forensic psychologists must also be good at interviewing, report writing, and possessing strong communication skills—for court and case presentations. With these skills, they are fit to perform a variety of tasks, including child custody evaluations and competency evaluations of criminal defendants.
Also, the assessment of forensic phycologists in mens rea cases is important to establish if the person being assessed intended to commit the crime.
Forensic psychologists are typically individuals with graduate degrees in clinical or nonclinical psychology and some form of training in forensics. Requirements for admission to graduate programs vary, but all programs require that students have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution and an acceptable grade-point average. Majoring in psychology as an undergraduate may be helpful, but it is not a prerequisite of admission to most graduate programs.
Programs vary in emphasis from clinical to nonclinical forensic issues. Graduate degrees in clinical or experimental psychology are likely to take the form of a master of arts (MA) or master of science (MS) degree or a doctor of philosophy (PhD) or psychology degree (PsyD). A doctoral-level degree (PhD or PsyD) is required for certification as a forensic psychologist.
Forensic training may involve a subspecialty within a chosen graduate program or a separate degree in conjunction with a psychology degree, such as a law degree (JD), a master of legal studies (MLS), or master of science and criminal justice (MSCJ). Generally, programs offering master’s degrees are of shorter duration (usually two to three years) than those offering doctorates (four to six years), and dual-degree programs, such as JD-PhD, may be longer. In addition, students—clinical students primarily, but some nonclinical students also—may be required to participate in some form of internship or mentoring program within a legal setting before completing degree requirements.
Content Areas in Forensic Psychology
In 2001, the American Psychological Association (APA) officially recognized forensic psychology as a specialty. It stipulated that education for a forensic specialty should be in applied psychology and recommended areas of specialization in clinical psychology, counseling psychology, neuropsychology, and school psychology, with advanced instruction in law and justice administration. These areas require some form of professional practice, such as psychological assessment (for example, to stand trial), consultation (for example, child custody determination), or psychotherapy (for example, treatment for sexual offenders).
Although not included in the APA recommendations for the forensic psychology specialty, many nonclinical programs with specialization in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and social psychology emphasize the study of law or legal issues that emerge as the result of judicial processes. A psychologist who focuses primarily on forensic research will acquire expertise in the use of scientific methodology, statistics, and scholarly writing to advance the study of forensic issues. Forensic issues can include phenomena related to cognitive processes (such as a police officer’s decision to use deadly force), techniques (such as the use of anatomically detailed dolls in interviews with children), or legal legislation, laws, and policy (such as racial profiling that results in searches of airline passengers of Middle Eastern heritage).
Clinical psychologists may conduct research on forensic issues and have many of the skills of nonclinical psychologists, but they are also skilled in the practice of psychology within the legal setting. Therefore, clinical psychologists, for example, may provide psychotherapy to juvenile offenders and conduct research assessing juveniles who are at risk for exhibiting violent behavior. They may work in private practice, in academic settings such as universities, or for state mental health or corrections facilities. In contrast, nonclinical psychologists typically work in academic or government settings as researchers. Clinical and nonclinical psychologists may consult (for example, acting as trial consultants) or provide expert testimony relevant to their areas of expertise (such as the reliability of eyewitness memory).
Bibliography
Bartol, Curt R., and Anne M. Bartol. Introduction to Forensic Psychology: Research and Application. 4th ed., Sage, 2015.
Connors, Edward, et al. Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science: Case Studies in the Use of DNA Evidence to Establish Innocence after Trial. Natl. Inst. of Justice, 1996.
Costanzo, Mark. Psychology Applied to Law. Thomson, 2004.
Doyle, James M. True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science, and the Battle against Misidentification. Palgrave, 2005.
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Fulero, Solomon M., and Lawrence S. Wrightsman. Forensic Psychology. 3rd ed., Thomson, 2008.
Jamil, Elma. "Exploring the Mind in Court: The Role of Forensic Psychology." Medium, 20 Oct. 2023, medium.com/@ejamil‗62933/exploring-the-mind-in-court-the-role-of-forensic-psychology-1d02487aa34d. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Münsterberg, Hugo. On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime. Doubleday, 1908.
United States. Dept. of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Natl. Inst. of Justice. Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence. Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement. Natl. Inst. of Justice, 1999.
Ward, Jane Tyler. “What is Forensic Psychology?” American Psychological Association, Sept. 2013, www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psn/2013/09/forensic-psychology.aspx. Accessed 23 Aug. 2024.
Weiner, Irving B., and Randy K. Otto, editors. The Handbook of Forensic Psychology. 4th ed., Wiley, 2014.