Police psychology

DEFINITION: Variety of professional services offered by psychologists in law-enforcement settings.

SIGNIFICANCE: The varied contributions of psychologists to the work of law enforcement have altered the ways in which certain police tasks are performed and have greatly improved the processes of law-enforcement personnel recruitment and evaluation.

The initial involvement of psychologists with law enforcement had its roots in the early twentieth-century work of well-known cognitive psychologists Louis Thurstone and Lewis Terman, who applied the measures of IQ that they developed to the assessment of police officers. It was not until the latter part of the century, however, that psychologists began to work with police departments in a full-time capacity and to increase the variety of their services. Two of the early pioneers in this regard were Martin Reiser of the Los Angeles Police Department and Harvey Schlossberg of the New York City Police Department. Reiser was best known for his work in the development of forensic hypnosis techniques and the treatment of police stress. Schlossberg was the first police officer to obtain a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. He went on to become his police department’s first full-time psychologist.

Psychological work in law enforcement is commonly related to four primary areas: applicant screening, officer counseling, carrying out assessments of officers’ fitness for duty, and participation in hostage negotiations.

Applicant Screening

The screening of applicants for law-enforcement jobs is typically accomplished in two stages: A battery of psychological instruments, including various personality tests, is administered, followed by an interview with a staff psychologist to review the results. Taking the tests can be stressful in itself, as the tests are typically given one after the other and several contain more than three hundred response items. By far the most heavily used (and most researched) instrument is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The items on this test are subdivided into scales that assess various aspects of psychopathology, and applicants who score high on one or more of these scales are questioned about their responses by the psychologist. Often, questioned applicants claim that they misunderstood the items; if the psychologist decides that an applicant’s scores on the instrument’s internal lie scales indicate a lack of candor, the applicant may be asked to take the test again. If pathological tendencies remain unexplained to the examining psychologist’s satisfaction, this may be grounds for rejection.

The administration of psychological tests is typically part of a “screening out” recruitment model, which focuses on detecting applicants’ inability to tolerate stress and prejudicial attitudes toward various groups officers may encounter in their work (including women, homeless people, gay people, and members of racial or ethnic minority groups). The California Personality Inventory (CPI) is another popular test; it is oriented toward measuring adaptive or prosocial psychological tendencies. The CPI is often used when recruitment is done using a “selecting in” model, which aims to identify applicants with particular qualities or abilities that are desirable for police work. This may be especially relevant for those police forces that have adopted a “community policing” model, which emphasizes close work between law-enforcement personnel and community members on a variety of projects that address quality-of-life issues. Personality attributes such as warmth, empathy, insight, and creativity are important types of selection criteria in these circumstances.

Counseling

The counseling aspects of police psychology focus on addressing the immediate needs of officers referred by supervisors. The most common problems are difficulties in dealing with the inherent stresses of the work and unresolved anger management issues. This part of the police psychologist’s role is especially controversial among police officers themselves. Officers who receive counseling are typically not evaluated on a voluntary basis, and, in many departments, it is routine at the initial consultation for the psychologist to authorize a temporary removal of the officer’s gun. Many of the officers referred for counseling have family members who served long careers in law enforcement without ever having to face this issue, and it is traumatic for them. The weapon itself is an integral part of an officer’s self-identity, and its removal, even for a temporary period, is a devastating blow to the officer’s ego and affects the officer’s reputation on the force.

Most police counselors function in a short-term capacity. That is, a counselor will assess an officer’s initial problem and then may offer a limited number of therapy sessions in an attempt to define the parameters of the problem further and develop an approach toward resolution. Longer-term therapeutic interventions are usually referred to outside psychologists or psychiatrists, even when a police department is large enough to employ its own psychologists on a full-time basis.

Fitness for Duty

A specialized form of short-term psychological services is the fitness-for-duty evaluation (FFDE). FFDEs are often oriented toward the assessment of stress tolerance or other possible difficulties that officers may be perceived to have in carrying out their jobs. Such evaluations may be required on a regular basis for personnel in high-stress units. FFDEs are often conducted routinely after any incidents involving the use of weapons, as part of efforts to screen for ongoing psychological difficulties in the aftermath of particularly stressful events.

A full evaluation of fitness for duty involves multiple data sources, including standardized psychological tests and clinical interviews, citizen complaints, background check reports, and records of any medical interventions. US courts have generally upheld the right of police departments to require their personnel to undergo FFDEs when specific circumstances indicate that this practice will support the interests of public safety or maintain or increase the efficiency of the department’s work.

It has been recommended that FFDEs be conducted by licensed psychologists who are knowledgeable about the relevant police psychology literature and related civil rights issues that affect law-enforcement agencies. The rationale justifying the evaluation of an officer’s fitness for duty should be specific and based on alleged job behavior. The report that the evaluating psychologist later provides to law-enforcement executives should include only information that is directly relevant to the performance of the officer’s job duties. FFDE sessions are sometimes recorded on audio or videotape to protect departments from later allegations of arbitrariness or bias.

Participation in Hostage Negotiations

Psychologists’ involvement in police hostage negotiations and on related crisis-intervention teams has been significant, especially since the early 1970s, when the Attica prison riot and the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes at the Munich Olympic Games received worldwide attention. Although psychologists’ ultimate goal in hostage negotiations is to diffuse these situations through the use of an active system of creative problem resolution, the first thing psychologists must address is the emotionality of the hostage takers. This part of the intervention often proceeds in distinct stages: First, the negotiation team establishes communication with the hostage takers and convinces them that the team clearly hears and understands their demands (even though they do not agree with them); the negotiation team then lets as much time pass as possible to decrease the emotional level of the situation while investigators work to obtain more detailed information about what caused the situation, the present dangers and their likelihood of occurrence, and what can be done to and for the hostage takers when the immediate crisis is over. Only after these stages have successfully passed can psychologists begin the active work of problem resolution with optimal chances for success.

A large part of the police training provided by psychologists working in the areas of hostage negotiation and crisis intervention is conducted in a role-playing format. Much of this work is based on actual past incidents, frequently cases involving domestic violence, workplace violence, or suicide. Role-playing exercises in such training may last from several minutes to several hours; those of relatively long duration have obvious advantages in terms of their ability to simulate actual situations realistically. Online training modules have also been developed that take full advantage of both synchronous and asynchronous communication modes.

Bibliography

Cojean, Sebastien, et al. "Psychological and Sociological Factors Influencing Police Officers' Decisions to Use Force: A Systematic Literature Review." International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, vol. 70, June 2020, doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2020.101569. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Craddock, Tina B. and Grace T. "Police Stress and Deleterious Outcomes: Efforts Towards Improving Police Mental Health." Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, 9 Nov. 2021, doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09488-1. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Reiser, Martin, and Nels Klyver. “Consulting with Police.” The Handbook of Forensic Psychology. Ed. Irving B. Weiner and Allen K. Hess. New York: Wiley, 1987. Print.

Rostow, Cary D., and Robert D. Davis. A Handbook for Psychological Fitness-for-Duty Evaluations in Law Enforcement. New York: Haworth Clinical Practice, 2004. Print.

Rostow, Cary D., Robert D. Davis, and Judith P. Levy. “Police Psychology: The Influence of Daubert and Its Progeny.” Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 17.2 (2002): 1–8. Print.

Vecchi, Gregory M., Vincent B. Van Hasselt, and Stephen J. Romano. “Crisis (Hostage) Negotiation: Current Strategies and Issues in High-Risk Conflict Resolution.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 10.5 (2005): 533–51. Print.

Walker, Lenore E. A., and David L. Shapiro. Introduction to Forensic Psychology: Clinical and Social Psychological Perspectives. New York: Kluwer, 2003. Print.