Role of Psychologists in Forensic settings

Presented by Kaushiki Sengupta

Supervised by (Prof.) Dr. Sanjukta Das
Definition:
Forensic Psychology refers to professional practice by any psychologist working within any
subdiscipline of psychology (e.g., clinical, developmental, social, cognitive) when applying
the scientific, technical, or specialized knowledge of psychology to the law to assist in
addressing legal, contractual, and administrative matters. (APA,2013)
History of Forensic Psychology
 Legal Psychology: Refers to psychological theory, research, and practice directly
pertinent to the law and legal issues.
 Psychology of Testimony (eyewitness accounts of events were unreliable and
incomplete) Cattell, 1895
 Courtroom Testimony (application of the psychology of suggestion to court
processes) Albert Von Schrenck-Notzing, 1896
 Psychologists at the turn of the 20th century and until World War I also were delving
into the area of guilt deception, the precursor of the lie detection of today. William
Marston (1917) had discovered a significant positive correlation between systolic
blood pressure and lying, which became the basis of the modern polygraph.
 Expert Testimony:
 State v. Driver in 1921: The occasion was only a partial victory for forensic
psychology.
 Jenkins v. United States 1962: Federal courts and increasingly more state
courts certified psychologists as expert witnesses in both criminal and civil
cases.
 Assessment and Correctional Psychology:
 1909, Grace M. Fernald and William Healy established the first clinic for
youthful offenders, the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute which served the
newly established Juvenile Court of Chicago by offering diagnoses of
“problem" children.
 Until 1960s, Psychologists in correctional facilities were focused more on
testing, providing guidance usually at the inmates request and maintaining
working relations with all members of the prison staff.
 In the 1960s, rehabilitation as a correctional goal began to gain favor.
 Police Psychology:
 The first trend—1916 to 1960—is characterized by attempts of psychologists
to assess the intellectual skills required to be an effective police officer.
 The second trend—1952 to 1975— development of personality measures
capable of distinguishing effective from less effective officers.
  The third trend—1974 to 1994— identification and treatment of stress and
other emotional reactions often experienced by police officers and their loved
ones.
 1970s and beyond:
 During the 1970s, interdisciplinary and specialized training in forensic
psychology was introduced at the doctoral, master’s, internship, postdoctoral,
and continuing education levels
 1978, board certification in forensic psychology was provided by the
American Board of Forensic Psychology
 2001, APA recognized forensic psychology as a specialty field in psychology
 Forensic Psychology in India
 Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) of Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) started Lie Detection Division in the year 1968 by appointing a
Psychologist.
 Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Ahmedabad, Gujarat appointed three
Psychologists in different cadres to start lie detection unit. In 1982, the first
psychologist was appointed as Scientific Assistant, followed by Scientific
Officer in April 1984, and Assistant Director in December 1984.
 From 1985 to 1988, more than 150 cases were received for examination and
were registered in the Lie Detection Division.
 From 1985 onwards, forensic psychological assessment was introduced for
examining crime suspects
 1985 to 1988 clinical interview and findings of psychological assessments
were integrated to suspect interrogations
 October 1, 1988 the Home Department, Government of Gujarat issued an
order to establish Forensic Psychology Division in Forensic Science Laboratory
by renaming the Lie Detection Division
Role of Psychologist in the legal system
 Expert Testimony: Observations and opinions of psychologists will educate the recipient
(e.g., attorney, judge, jury) about psychological phenomena that are relevant to the legal
matters in dispute, and, as a result, a more accurate and presumably better decision will be
made.
 Conducting and testifying forensic psychological evaluations: Psychologists provide
assistance to the legal system by offering observations and opinions about the emotional,
behavioral, and/or cognitive functioning of someone whose mental state is at issue in a legal
proceeding.
 Conducting and testifying about litigation-specific research: Psychologists can be of
assistance to attorneys and the court by conducting and presenting the results of research
that addresses important points of contention in a specific litigation.
 Testifying about psychological research not conducted in anticipation of litigation:
Psychologists can also assist legal decision makers and legislative bodies by providing
observations and expert opinions about more general matters that are nonetheless of
interest to the court or legislature. For example, psychologists testify about research that
 sheds light on some matter that is relevant to the case at hand, but they typically do not
offer opinions about specific case matters.
 Researching the legal system: Psychologists conduct research that examines the legal
system and its operation which help to understand and improve the legal system and provide
important information to those who make policies and laws that shape the legal system and
its operation.

Psychologists assisting legal actors

 Assisting law enforcements:
 Conducting investigations and questioning witnesses and suspects.
 Screening, selection, recruitment of police candidates.
 Providing critical mental health services to sworn officers and their families.
 Assisting attorneys: Psychologist provide consultation to attorneys with respect to
case formulation and jury matters. Psychologists can assist attorneys by helping them
conceptualize their case in a way that will be most compelling for the jury.
Psychologists may assist attorneys with jury selection. Attorneys may rely on forensic
psychologists to assist them in selecting the most desirable jurors (i.e., jurors most
likely to be sympathetic to their claims/arguments and reach a verdict in their favour.

Applying psychology in criminal proceedings

1. Competency to stand trial is a concept of jurisprudence allowing the postponement
of criminal proceedings for those defendants who are unable to participate in their
defense on account of insanity or intellectual disability.
Different Views on Competency:
 Absence or presence of psychosis.
 The specific psycho-legal abilities required of a defendant are the most important
aspect of assessing fitness. Competence to be considered within the context in which
it is to be used. For instance, the abilities required by the defendant in his or her
specific case should be taken into account when assessing competence.
Measures of Competency:
• Ability to understand the nature or object of the proceedings, or factual knowledge
of criminal procedure.
• Ability to understand the possible consequences of the proceedings, or the
appreciation of personal involvement in and importance of the proceedings
• Ability to communicate with counsel and to participate in the defense
Juvenile measures of Competency:
 Understanding and appreciation of the charge and allegations
 Understanding and appreciation of the purpose of the delinquency hearing
  Understanding and appreciation of possible pleas
 Understanding and appreciation of possible penalties
 Understanding and appreciation of the prosecutor’s role
 Understating and appreciation of the defence attorney’s role
 Understanding and appreciation of the juvenile probation officer’s role
 Understanding and appreciation of the judge’s role
 Ability to work with and assist counsel
 Understanding and appreciation of the plea agreement process
 Decision-making and reasoning abilities relevant to deciding whether to retain
counsel, assist counsel, and make plea decisions
 Ability to participate in and understand the legal proceedings, including the capacity
to testify
Guidelines for Psychologist
 Determine why the fitness issue was raised, what evidence was offered, and which
trial and dispositional alternatives are being considered by both parties.
 Consideration of previous records, if any, pertaining to the mental health of the
defendant.
 Police reports of the alleged offense to be considered as well as a history of criminal
record, particularly if the defendant has cycled through the criminal justice and
mental health systems several times.
2. Criminal Responsibility
 Insanity defence
 Guilty but medically ill
Assessment of mental state at the time of the Offense
 Obtain information regarding defendant’s history of psychiatric disturbance,
treatments received, and general experience of his or her psychiatric condition.
Prior episodes that may have involved criminal charges and/or competency
evaluations, civil commitments, or other such dispositions.
 Focus on the relationship of the psychopathological elements to the criminal
conduct charge. Doing this often involves comparing the defendant’s reports of
his or her mental state and behaviours with various aspects of crime scene
evidence.
 Role of examiner, as expert, is to state about the existence of various psychiatric
conditions and their relationship to behavioral, perceptual, cognitive, and
judgmental capacities.
3. Diminished Capacity (Lack of Criminal responsibility)
Diminished capacity advocates that the defendant might have suffered from some
disordered state of mind that is less than psychotic in severity—perhaps one that was
transitory or induced by drugs or alcohol and hence, although guilty, is unable to form
the intent to commit the major crime being charged. In contrast, to the negation of
criminal responsibility by the insanity defense, diminished capacity considers Mens Rea
 (criminal intent) in terms of the presence or absence of discrete elements of intent.
Diminished capacity is not exculpating and does not lead to outright acquittal of all
wrongdoing. Forensic practitioner is asked to provide an opinion in terms of true
diminished capacity and actuality of intent (i.e, whether the person had the intent to
commit that particular crime, for example, burglary), when a case of diminished
capacity is raised.

Preliminary assessment
The juvenile Justice Act, 2015 Under section 15 states that in case of a heinous offence
(imprisonment of 7 years or above) alleged to have been committed by a child, who has
completed or is above the age of sixteen years, the Board shall conduct a preliminary
assessment with regard to his mental and physical capacity to commit such offence, ability
to understand the consequences of the offence and the circumstances in which he allegedly
committed the offence, and may pass an order that there is a need for trial of the said child
as an adult.
Assessing violence risk
• It refers to the assessments of risk that certain individuals will cause certain types of
harm under particular conditions within particular periods of time.
• Evaluation of risk comprises two distinct phases: Understanding the examinees
potential for violence which involves analyzing the examinees history of violence,
psychosocial adjustment, and living situation; determining what events and
occurrences might increase or decrease examinees’ potential for violence.
• Goal for the first phase is to understand what kinds of violence examinees might
perpetrate, against which people, for which reasons, and under which circumstances;
the goal for the second phase is to prevent (i.e., mitigate the risk of) future violence
by developing a plan for intervention.
Steps of evaluation of violence risk
• Gather Critical information: Examinees history of violence; description of the actual
assault; description of the aggressor; timeline of violent incident; intention, action,
motivation; thoughts and feelings before, during and after the incident.
• Identify the presence of risk factors: Characteristics of examinees, their living
situations, and their plans for the future, and characteristics of potential victims, that
might increase or decrease risk; case-specific risk factor
• Develop scenarios of violence: Evaluator need to consider what kinds of violence the
examinee might perpetrate, for which motivations, against which victims, with what
kinds of consequences, and at which times. The evaluator focuses on what
 reasonably could happen based on the evaluator's general knowledge and
experience and the specifics of the case at hand.
• Management Plans: evaluators develop case management plans based on plausible
scenarios of violence, which in turn were based on the presence and relevance of
risk factors.
Psychologist as Treatment Provider
RNR model of Offender Rehabilitation
 Risk: The risk principle directs that the degree of intensity of treatment programs for
offenders must be matched to an offender’s level of risk. People differ from each
other in the likelihood of engaging in criminal behaviour, and that this likelihood can
be predicted from a wide range of factors, including current attributes and previous
criminal behaviour. Level of risk is important because, all other things being equal,
more crime can be prevented by targeting higher rather than lower risk offenders for
service. Therefore, offenders' current risk level should be identified prior to making
intervention decisions.
 Need: The needs principle posits that, to reduce recidivism, treatment must focus on
the offender’s “criminogenic needs” (i.e., the characteristics that contribute to the
individual’s offending)
 Responsivity: The responsivity principle considers factors that may affect or even
impede an offender’s response to interventions
Good Lives Model
• The GLM of offender rehabilitation is essentially a strength-based approach and
seeks to give offenders the capabilities to secure primary human goods in socially
acceptable and personally meaningful ways.
• Primary goods are defined as actions, states of affairs, characteristics, experiences,
and states of mind that are intrinsically beneficial to human being.
• Individuals resort to law violation when they face obstacles in the attainment of
primary and secondary goals.
• The aim of correctional intervention according to the GLM is the promotion of
primary goods, or human needs that, once met, enhance psychological well-being as
well as reducing risk of reoffending.
• People offend because they are attempting to secure some kind of valued outcome
in their life. As such, offending is essentially the product of a desire for something
that is inherently human and normal. Unfortunately, the desire or goal manifests
itself in harmful and antisocial behaviours, due to a range of deficits and weaknesses
within the offender and his/her environment. Essentially, these deficits prevent the
offender from securing his desired ends in pro-social and sustainable ways
Application
  Mapping out an individual’s good lives conceptualization by identifying the
importance given to each of the various primary goods.
 Future oriented secondary goods aimed at satisfying a client’s primary goods in
socially acceptable ways are formulated collaboratively with the client and
translated into a good lives rehabilitation plan
 Treatment is individually tailored to assist the client implement their good lives
plan and simultaneously address criminogenic needs that might be blocking goods
fulfilment
 Intervention include building internal capacity and skills and maximizing external
resources and social supports to satisfy primary human goods in socially acceptable
ways.
Human rights model (Warden & Birgden, 2007)
• Well-being: It includes Physical security, material subsistence which states equal
access to basic elements and elemental equality i.e, equal before law and no
discrimination on the basis of race, religion and gender
• Freedom and right to be treated in a dignified manner.
Therapeutic Jurisprudence: The study of role of law as therapeutic agent. In other words, it
is more like humanizing the law, taking into consideration the human, psychological and
emotional side of the legal process. This model aims to balance justice principles and
therapeutic principles. The role of law as a therapeutic agent can operate in legal rules, legal
procedures and with legal actors.
Conducting child custody and parent evaluation:
Definition: "The elegance of the “best interest” standard is the simultaneous focus on both
the needs of the particular child and, with appropriate weight, the normative child
development factors".
Reasons for referral
 Allegations regarding drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, or child abuse, or
significant mental health problems.
 Both parents appear good enough at parenting but who cannot agree on a parenting
plan
Objectives:
 For the Judges to understand complex psychological questions of attachment
between the child and his or her parents, sibling relationships, and the
developmental needs of children.
 An opportunity for parents to voice their concerns to a neutral expert
 Listening to children, evaluators can also identify when children are caught in a
loyalty conflict between their parents and describe the impact of this conflict to the
parents and the court
Consideration of Factors by evaluators when conducting child custody evaluation
 Quality of parenting (strengths and weaknesses of each parent).
 Quality of coparenting (parents are effective at communicating and making decisions
on behalf of the child, or they are in high conflict and unable to do so).
 Substance use/abuse issues.
 Mental health issues.
 Each parent’s support of the child’s relationship with the other parent.
 History of conflict resolution.
 Presence or absence of domestic violence—and if present, whether coercive
 control dynamics exist or not.
 The child’s psychological, developmental, academic, and social functioning.
 The child’s special needs, if any.
Psychology and law enforcement
• To ensure that officers recruited were emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively fit to
perform the duties and functions of a law enforcement officer.
• Fitness for duty evaluation
• Law enforcement agencies request clinical services for police personnel experiencing
the effects of cumulative or posttraumatic stress, substance use disorders, marital
and relationship conflicts, and other problems.
• Crisis response to help officers adjust to on-duty traumatic incidents
• Traumatic incident interventions are initiated to reduce immediate stress and
prevent posttraumatic stress disorder
• Various training programs for law enforcement officers such as stress management,
responding to persons with mental illness, cross-cultural awareness etc.
Assessing civil capacities
• Psychologists also play a role in providing assistance to legal decision makers
regarding the capacities of individuals across a wide range of contexts. The impact of
such opinions can be far-reaching and may have serious implications for the civil
liberties and rights of the individuals in question.
• Guardianship: Guardianship allows the state to appoint someone (i.e., a guardian) to
exercise the rights of a person who has been adjudicated as lacking such ability.
• Financial Capacity: lack of capacity to manage financial affairs
• Testamentary Capacity: The capacity of an individual to create or change a will is
known as testamentary capacity
Forensic Roles vs Therapeutic Roles- A critical review

Care provision Forensic evaluation

 Whose client is The mental health The forensic evaluator
patient/litigant? practitioner

The cognitive set and Supportive, accepting, Expected to be less

evaluative attitude of each empathetic empathetic & more
expert mechanical in approach

The nature and degree of A helping relationship; An evaluative relationship;

“adversariness” in each rarely adversarial perceived as more
relationship adversarial

The nature of the Diagnostic criteria for the Psycho-legal criteria for
hypotheses tested by each purpose of therapy purpose of legal
expert adjudication

The goal of the professional Therapist attempts to Evaluator advocates for the
in each relationship benefit the patient by results and implications of
working within the the evaluation for the
therapeutic relationship benefit of the court

What forensic treatment services look like?

“From the time the practitioner reasonably expects to, agrees to, or is legally mandated to
provide expertise on an explicitly Psycho-legal issue."