The forensic psychology literature indicates that forensic psychologists are academicians, theoreticians, researchers, therapists in forensic settings, and evaluators, serving as educators, advisors, and reformers influencing the law, the legal system, and trial and courtroom processes, with the ultimate goal of improving justice for all people. Forensic psychologists proceed in accordance with specific professional guidelines for the practice of forensic psychology.
How is Psychology Relevant to the Law and Possibly Useful for Your Case?
When conducting empirical research, psychologists with scientific training use existing psychological theories and empirical knowledge to try to elucidate questions by generating hypotheses to be empirically tested and validated, or disconfirmed, thereby adding to the existing body of empirical findings, and sometimes setting the stage for the development of new psychological theories and knowledge. Forensic psychologists who evaluate your case based on a review of records, or evaluate your client in person, use a similar process of generating and testing hypotheses based on psychological knowledge and the characteristics of your case or your client, and, depending on the findings, continue to generate or modify their hypotheses to further test them. In this process, forensic psychologists are bound to avoid bias and remain neutral as they keep their methods as rigorous and as objective as possible, regardless of who has retained their services. One of the ways that a psychologist can be helpful to a defense attorney is by providing hypotheses that can be explored through further investigation taking place outside of the psychologist’s practice.
As evaluators, educators, and advisors to the courts, psychologists present and defend their opinions in forensic psychological and other evaluations reports and in court. They can provide reports on a topic of interest to the court, expert testimony, trial consultation (for instance, for the selection of juries, the preparation of adult and child witnesses, and trial strategies), and amici curiae and position papers, for instance through the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS).
Psychologists can also be reformers as they inform and shape public policy, and ultimately inform and shape laws and the justice system based on theories and knowledge derived from empirical research findings. For instance, within the criminal justice system, they may produce findings on the effectiveness of various programs for the prevention of certain types of crime, or for the treatment of convicted juveniles and adults; they produce the scientific research that guides best practices for the interrogation of suspects, and evaluate the importance and limitations of eyewitness testimony.
Psychologists often participate in multidisciplinary teams and are becoming increasingly trained in more than one discipline within the field of psychology and between fields (such as psychology and law) because domains of psychological scientific research and of legal science are increasingly specialized and interconnected; this is in the interest of trying to effectively assess and address societal issues such as those pertaining to child protection, family law, institutional injuries and discrimination, the criminal justice and incarceration systems, or the experience of military personnel.
You can count on Dr. Reed’s commitment to researching and applying the psychological knowledge relevant to your legal matters!
