Forensic

Psychology
BY: NIMRAH ISHFAQ
What is Forensic Psychology
 Forensic psychology, as defined by the American Psychological
Association, is the application of clinical specialties to the
legal settings.
 “The application of clinical specialties to legal institutions and
people who come into contact with the law”, again emphasizing
the application of clinical skills such as assessment, treatment,
evaluation to forensic settings.
 The broad definition of forensic psychology emphasizes the
application of research and experimentation in other areas
of psychology (e.g., cognitive psychology, social psychology) to
the legal arena. This would include applying results from
studies in areas such as cognitive psychology to legal questions.
 The scientific study FOCUSING effect of the law on
people, and the effect people have on the law.
Psychological assessment of individuals who are
involved, in one way or another, with the legal system.

Why you are studying it?

Scope of forensic psychology
The practice of forensic psychology involves
 Investigations,
 Research studies,
 Assessments,
 Consultation,
 The design and implementation of treatment programs and
 Expert witness courtroom testimony.
Skills like clinical assessment, interviewing, report writing, strong verbal
communication skills (especially if an expert witness in court) and case
presentation are all very important in setting the foundation of the
practice of forensic psychology.
Globally Roles and Responsibility
of a forensic psychologist
 Forensic psychologists are involved in both criminal and civil matters.
 Those working in the civil courts often assess competency, provide
second opinions, and provide psychotherapy to crime victims.
 Professionals working in the criminal courts conduct evaluations of
mental competency, work with child witnesses, and provide
an assessment of juvenile and adult offenders.
 Custody disputes
 Evaluate insurance claims
 Provide psychotherapy services in family courts
 Perform child custody evaluations
 Investigate reports of child abuse
Common Job Roles
Some of the functions typically performed within forensic psychology include:
 Competency evaluations
 Sentencing recommendations
 Evaluations of the risk of reoffending
 Testimony as an expert witness
 Child custody evaluations
 Academic research on criminality
 Consult with law enforcement
 Treatment of criminal offenders
 Provide psychological services to inmates and offenders
 Trial consultants who help with jury selection, witness preparation, or legal strategies
 Design correctional programs
Forensic Psychology in Pakistan
 Psychologists in Prison Setting.
- Criminal Psychology and Rehabilitation (Research and Clinical)
- Risk Assessment
 Psychologists in Job Selection Panels Screening
 Testification of eyewitness
 Investigation
…… Extended options
 Course Outline

Assessment in
Forensic Risk Assessment
• Background Psychology • Criminal
and history • Forensic Profiling •
• Scope & Role • Psychological Violence
Interviewing • Sex Offending
Autopsies
• Polygraph • Abuse
• Suicide
Introduction to Techniques of
Forensic Criminal
Psychology Investigation
 Perspective
s of
Violence
and Crime

Insanity vs.
Competency
MID TERMS

Interrogation
and false
confession
 PS
PERPETRATOR IMPROVING EYE YC
HO
INJ LOG SYNDROME SEXUAL CHILD
VS WITNESS U R I CA FORENSIC
HARASSMENT
VICTIM IDENTIFICATION Y L EVIDENCE PSYCHOLOGY
 History & Background
Changes in the law
 A number of crucial developments in the law that occurred centuries before modern
psychology was founded were vital to the development of forensic and criminal
psychology. These, in particular, were to do with legal principles concerning the
mentally ill and other vulnerable individuals.
 The earliest recorded legal principle about the mentally ill was that of Marcus
Aurelius (was Roman emperor from 161 to 180) in AD 179 (Spruit, 1998; Quinsey,
2009) when dealing with a question which was by a Roman governor. Aurelius
suggested that the governor should not be concerned about punishing an offender
who had murdered his own mother. The man was permanently insane and there
was no evidence that he was faking his disturbance.
 According to Aurelius, insanity itself was sufficient punishment. But there was a
need for the man to be kept in custody for his own protection and that of the
community. Had the crime occurred during a period of sanity, then the full
punishment would have been appropriate.
 Before the thirteenth century, in English law, the doing of something
evil was sufficient to establish the individual liable for that evil. The
offender’s mental condition was simply irrelevant to sentencing
(Eigen, 2004).
 In England and Wales, legal categories classifying the mentally
disordered first appeared in the Statutes at Large in 1324. These
distinguished between lunatics (insane or mad person) and idiots.
 In both cases the property belonging to the individual could be
transferred to the Crown or some entrusted person. The difference
was that the idiot lost his or her property forever but the lunatic might
have their property returned when they recovered from their lunacy
(insanity). Thus the law protected the possibility that some mental
disorders were temporary or curable.
 Legal changes allowing the detention of dangerous lunatics
emerged at about the middle of the eighteenth century. Such persons
could be held in workhouses, prisons or madhouses.
 By the end of the nineteenth century, legal categories such as idiot, insane,
lunatic and person of unsound mind were well deep-rooted (Forrester et al.,
2008).
 Umanath et al. (2011) review this especially from the viewpoint of
somnambulism and crimes committed in such a state of night walking or
sleepwalking. Umanath et al. see formal law dealing with somnambulism
beginning at the latest in 1313. At this time, the Council of Vienne resolved that
a sleepwalker, an insane person, or a child ought not to be found guilty of a
crime if he or she attacked or murdered someone while in that state.
 Other examples of such thinking can be found in the declaration of the Spanish
canonist Diego de Covarrubias, Bishop of Segovia, who claimed in the sixteenth
century that sleepwalkers who killed committed no sin so long as they did
not know of the risk that they might kill when they were asleep.
 Others developed similar principles in the seventeenth century: Sir George
Mackenzie, a Scottish legal scholar, compared a sleepwalker to an infant
and reserved punishment for sleepwalkers who had previously shown
hostility for their victim. Sleepwalkers, somnambulists or nightwalkers, then,
were not seen generally as sinning if they killed or injured in their
sleep without sign of malice.
Official Recognition
 Forensic psychology was officially recognized as a
specialization within psychology by the American psychological
association in 2001.

Eyewitness Testimony
 James McKeen Cattell, for example, conducted some of the
earliest research on the psychology of testimony.
He posed a series of questions to students at Columbia University,
asking them to provide a response and rate their degree of
confidence in their answer.
He found a surprising degree of inaccuracy, inspiring other
psychologists to conduct their own experiments in eyewitness
testimony. With even eyewitnesses being unsure of
themselves, this raised serious issues about the validity of
their usefulness in court.
 Alfred Binet studied the results of other psychology experiments
that applied to law and criminal justice. His work in
intelligence testing was also important to the development of
forensic psychology, as many future assessment tools were
based on his work.
 William Stern also studied witnesses' ability to recall
information. In one of his experiments, he asked students to
summarize a dispute they witnessed between two classmates.
Stern discovered errors were common among witnesses and
concluded that a person's emotions could affect how accurately
he remembered things.
 He later established the first academic journal devoted to
applied psychology.
 In 1896, a psychologist by the name of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing
testified at a murder trial about the effects of suggestibility on
witness testimony.
 In 1915, Munsterberg published "On the Witness Stand," a book
advocating the use of psychology in legal matters
 Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began applying psychology to law
enforcement in 1916. After revising Binet’s intelligence test, the new
Stanford-Binet test was used to assess the intelligence of job
candidates for law enforcement positions.
 In 1917, psychologist William Marston found that systolic blood
pressure had a strong correlation to lying. This discovery would later
lead to the design of the modern polygraph detector
 Significant growth in American forensic psychology did not happen
until after World War II. Prior to that time, psychologists served as
expert witnesses, but only in trials that weren’t perceived as
overstepping on medical specialists, who were seen as more credible
witnesses.
 In the 1940 case of People v. Hawthorne, the courts ruled that the
standard for expert witnesses depended on how much the witness
knew about a subject, not whether the person had a medical degree.
 In the landmark 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education,
several psychologists testified for the accusers and the defendants.
Later, the courts gave support to psychologists serving as
mental illness experts in the case of Jenkins v. the United States
IN PAKISTAN: