SUMMING UP FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY:Problems with Risk Assessment, Expert Witness

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Forensic Psychology (PSY - 513)

Lesson 45

SUMMING UP FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

Objective

To review the all main topics that we have learned so far.

Summing up

In this lecture we will look back to revise that what we have learned hitherto. First of all we looked at

the breadth and definition of Forensic psychology.

"Forensic Psychology is reflected by any application of psychological knowledge or methods to a task

faced by the legal system".

Then we touched the area of police psychology, Application of psychology is immensely important in

police department as being the single law enforcement agency. We need police psychologists for the:

Assessment

Selection and recruitment

Training

Support and Counseling

Helping in investigations

We also dwell in much depth about the psychology of violence and perspective of different

psychological models like:

Freudian Model

How inflated egos can resort to violence and what defense mechanisms can be the cause of any crime.

Jungian Model

While learning about Jungian model we had a discussion about the inflated archetypes and resulted

violence and aggression.

Humanistic Model

Behaviorist model

Crimnogenic personalities

Childhood abuse and trauma can develop a person into crimnogenic personality. Following personality

disorders are strongly linked with the violence and legal issues:

Personality Disorders

Antisocial Personality

Narcissistic Personality

Paranoid Personality

Borderline Personality

Anti social personality disorder is considered to be directly linked with the exertion of aggression and

violence. Although Borderline personality directly does not practice any violence but becomes an easy

prey and legal issues like prostitution, suicides rise on the surface.

Risk Assessment

Another area that requires psychologist's service is future risk assessment, prior release risk assessment

is done with the help of two types of instruments:

Static Instruments:

PCL-R, Static 99

Dynamic Instruments:

VRS, HCR-20

Static factors refer towards the unchangeable things that like the child hood trauma and abuse of

criminal.

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Forensic Psychology (PSY - 513)

Dynamic factors refer towards the changeable factors like if a person is taking heroine as a drug or

keeping weapons, once he decided to quit and quitted the addiction so risk factor is eliminated.

Problems with Risk Assessment

We also touched the controversial issue of unpredictable nature of human beings and implication of

statistical tools for predicting future risk.

Subjective

Statistical

Forensic treatment

In the realm of treatment we learned about the therapies like narrative therapy

Narrative Therapy

Proved useful with prisoners

People live out stories

Prisoners have negative stories

Therapist collects positive events

Weaves them into a positive story

Questions are the most important technique

Along with NT we also dwell into details of Solution focused Therapy, Art Therapy, Drama Therapy,

Role Play, Empty Chair, Role Reversal and many other techniques.

Expert Witness

Another duty of a Forensic psychologist is to write reports for courts as an expert witness. We learned

the method of report writing and few elemental things like:

You work for the courts and not for lawyers

Use as much objective evidence as possible

Opinion should be based on factual evidence

We also splurge two lectures understanding the problem and treatment of substance misuse.

Point to ponder! In Pakistan Forensic Psychology is a new emerging field, there is a crucial need

to hire psychologist in police department and other civil and criminal courts and settings.

References:

Wrightsman, L. S. (2001). Forensic psychology. Belmont, CA:

Bartol, C. & Bartol, A. (2004). Introduction to Forensic Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Handbook of Psychology, Volume 11. Forensic psychology / edited by Alan M. Goldstein and

published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/psy/psylect01.htm

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/dpr8.pdf

http://careerfocus.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7316/S2-7316

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/190/49/s66

http://mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=629&cn=8

http://www.swin.edu.au/victims/resources/assessment/personality/psychopathy_checklist.html

http://www.tara4bpd.org/bpd.html

http://www.islamcan.com/99names/index.shtml

http://www.islamweb.net.qa/ver2/archive/article.php?lang=E&id=17525

http://www.athealth.com/Practitioner/ceduc/parentingstyles.htmlv

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/bandura.htm

http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/skinnerbox.html

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Forensic Psychology (PSY - 513)

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/behsys/classcnd.html

http://www.paralumun.com/dreamjung.htm

http://www.kheper.net/topics/Jung/typology.html

http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/develop.html

http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_58.asp http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/sampprof.htm

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/psy/psylect03.htm

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/psy/psylect04.htm

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/psy/psylect06.htm

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/428lect16.htm

http://www.heavybadge.com/efstress.htm

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/417/417lect09.htm

http://speakout.com/activism/issue_briefs/1165b-1.html

http://www.apadiv31.org/Coop/ForensicPsychology.pdf

http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/PUB/C21.htm

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/sheppard2/class_4.html

http://www.crimeandclues.com/92feb003.html

http://www.wcupa.edu/_ACADEMICS/sch_cas.psy/Career_Paths/Forensic/Career08.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_confession

http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/315/315lect01.htm

http://www.criminalprofiling.ch/introduction.html

http://www.serialkillercalendar.com/killerextrascrimescenes.html

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