Article Contents

What is Forensic Psychology

History

Hugo Munsterberg, a German psychologist, started a psychology laboratory at Harvard University when he moved to the United States, where he studied the inaccuracies, biases and memory lapses of the eyewitness testimony to a crime.

In 1895, the department head at Columbia University, James Cartell, experimented with his 56 students asking questions and rating their confidence in the answers. He found out that even the most confident student was not able to be accurate in their answers.

You might have heard about the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Alfred Binet created the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale in 1903 to determine which student were below the average in intelligence and who would need special education within the French education system. You might be thinking about what this has to with forensic psychology? This scale was later adapted by Lewis Terman and was then called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Terman used this scale to determine the best candidate for the number of Police Force.

Introduction

Whenever you hear forensic psychology the first thing that would come to your mind would be CID or it would be Hannibal (American TV series). So basically, Forensic psychology can be defined as a specialization within the field of psychology and law. Forensic psychology looks into psychological perspective and applies into legal investigations. Forensic psychologists apply their psychology in legal matters, dispute resolution. These professionals typically work in jails, prisons, law agencies, schools, private practices, government firms or some professionals would simply be restricted to research work only.

Profiling

Profiling also called as psychological profiling, personality profiling, offenders profiling, etc. it is the process of connecting or associating offender’s profile to the crime scene to the most likely characteristic to help investigators narrow down and prioritize the suspect. Psychologists are called on to investigate and analyse the crime based on this psychological profiling and help out with the offender’s action. The main psychological component behind profiling is that there will be consistency between the offender’s act at the crime scene and who they are. Offender characteristics focused on typically include demographics, such as gender, age, previous interpersonal and criminal history, etc. and the offender’s relationship and victim.

Graphology

Forensic Graphology is the techniques of studying handwriting which helps an individual’s state of mind. It cannot tell specific things about a person like a gender, age, etc from handwriting, but it does help to know the feelings or the state of mind of the person from a particular document. A graphologist mostly emphasises on these factors i.e. mood, motivation, intelligence, emotional stability, integrity. A graphologist examines a person’s handwriting on these above factors, there may be more factors depending upon the reasoning of some particular investigation.

They make use of a test called ESDA test-Electrostatic Development of Intended Writing Test. This type of test comes up with strong evidence that is not visible to the naked eyes. Another important characteristic of forensic graphologist is to help provide a strong profile to forensic psychologist that the law or police can use to get a list of suspects.

Roles and Responsibilities

Forensic psychologist, sometimes id referred to as criminal profiler where they work very closely with law agencies to develop the criminal profile on the basis of psychological traits and behaviour. Other than forensics, they study clinical psychology and criminal justice. They study the traits and behaviours of criminals and addresses issues from psychological theories to legal cases.

Few of the responsibilities of a forensic psychologist are they have to do a screening of the prisoners, examine the psychological disorders between the court criminal and the court defendant, and also to examine the mental health of the criminal to consider if they are all right to bear the court trails. The forensic psychologist is also called in courts on behalf of the defendant to testify the theory the police or the prosecutor have about the criminal defendant. The forensic psychologist also builds relationships with clients to provide one-on-one therapy sessions, like when the police have been involved or it is a court’s order. Forensic psychologists also recommend group sessions for criminals. One important job of every forensic psychologist is to protect the rights of each client they see.

Ethics of forensic psychologists

Ethics are the moral principles which define what id good or bad for an individual or the society. For practitioners, ethic codes provide morals to their conduct and help in some uncertain situations. Ethic codes also help gain trust from people for the practitioner, it helps people understand what they can expect from the professionals and safeguard their rights and welfare.

Ethical issues in forensic psychology

When comes to forensic psychologists, the psychologists have to keep in mind the ethical standards when sessions or therapies are being conducted with an individual or a group.

We’ll discuss some the points that need to be taken into consideration

Confidentiality and information sharing: Confidentiality is one of the key factors of ethics not only in forensic psychology but in any kind of psychology. The patient really needs to be explained by the psychologists the limits od confidentiality during the therapy or treatment. It is acceptable to share some general information of the patient regarding the progress or the state of mind. But any information that may pose danger may arise as an ethical issue.
Relationships with other clinical professionals: Many times there is a situation where the psychologists will have to work with other clinical staff with regard to the situation. They will have to work closely to get to the roots of patients struggle and recognize the psychological patterns from the patient’s past to avoid the destructive patterns.
Coercion: Coercion is the act of persuading to someone to something by force. Forensic therapies have some cases where the patient’s treatment needs to the patient to agree on the treatment.
Maintaining therapeutic relationships: Maintaining boundaries and strict therapeutic relationship between the therapist and the patient is essential. Clients entering into any form of therapy are vulnerable and any form of sexual interaction can lead to mistrust, anger, identity issues.

Professional vs personal ethics

Personal ethics in this field refers to the concerns of the psychologist, these are based on the personal ethics or religious consideration which are not derived from professional roles. On the other hand, professional ethics refers to the ethical codes that regulate professional conduct which is more fundamental in concept than personal ethics.

Difference between therapeutic and clinical assessment

Therapeutic assessment

When a client seeks psychologists help to get relief from mental disorders like depression, schizophrenia, personality disorder, etc they start by doing the therapeutic assessment of the patient. The psychologist’s role in assessment is to figure out the problem the client is suffering from and to make out what treatment would be beneficial for the client to improve his mental health. In this type of assessment, psychologists need to convey empathy, gain trust and make the client open up. The client’s statements can be factually true but it can’t be always relevant to the assessment, and also the psychologist will not try to prove the statement true given in the therapy.

Clinical assessment

Clinical assessment is also known as the health assessment is a document that is used to evaluate and diagnose an individual’s overall well-being whether it be physical or mental or both. In most cases, the assessment is very similar in format to routine health check-up or physical health check-up, but the reason why each is done tends to be different. Employers, insurance companies or government companies may insist that people undergo the assessment process before they can be hired, paid or promoted.

Types of test and instrument in forensic psychology

While there are instruments specifically designed for forensic use, like structured interviews, rating scales or the tests designed for use kept in mind the Competence Assessment instrument for standing trials (CAI), Psychopathy Checklist-Revised(PCL-R), and Competency Assessment for Standing Trial for Defendants with Mental Retardation(CAST/MR) .

Mental status examination (MSE)—this is an assessment for the patient’s level of cognitive ability, emotional mood, appearance, speech and thought patterns at the time of evaluation.

Interview and Cognitive Interview-interview is a face-to-face discussion between the interviewer and the interviewee. Cognitive interview enhances the subject which is co-operative and is hard to narrate the incident.

Cognitive testing—Cognitive testing is the test of cognition. Also called an intelligence test, neurocognitive test, psychological test.