The Law Meets Psychological Expertise: Eight Best Practices to Improve Forensic Psychological Assessment (original) (raw)
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Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2014
We conducted an international survey in which forensic examiners who were members of professional associations described their two most recent forensic evaluations (N=434 experts, 868 cases), focusing on the use of structured assessment tools to aid expert judgment. This study describes: (a) the relative frequency of various forensic referrals, (b) what tools are used globally, (c) frequency and type of structured tools used, and (d) practitioners’ rationales for using/not using tools. We provide general descriptive information for various referrals. We found most evaluations used tools (74.2%) and used several (on average 4). We noted the extreme variety in tools used (286 different tools). We discuss the implications of these findings and provide suggestions for improving the reliability and validity of forensic expert judgment methods. We conclude with a call for an assessment approach that seeks structured decision methods to advance greater efficiency in the use and integration of case-relevant information. Keywords: judgment; decision; forensic; structure; actuarial
Civil and Criminal Forensic Psychological Assessment: Similarities and Unique Challenges
Psychological Injury and Law, 2015
The current article reflects on the similarities and unique challenges of civil and criminal forensic psychological assessment. We begin with an overall review of the general roles and ethical responsibilities of the forensic psychologist working in any legal arena. Topics such as ethics of the forensic examiner, the role of psychiatric diagnosis, consideration of malingering and response bias, use of psychological testing, and researching relevant laws and psycholegal questions are covered. We then discuss the particular challenges of working in a criminal forensic setting (e.g., conducting assessments in a correctional setting, working with potentially dangerous evaluees), as well as civil forensic setting (e.g., role of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in civil litigation). This paper will highlight that while there are unique challenges and aspects of working in a particular area of the law, more often than not, the same general principles and skill sets of forensic psychological assessment will translate between each area.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
According to the literature, psychological assessment in forensic contexts is one of the most controversial application areas for clinical psychology. This paper presents a review of systematic judgment errors in the forensic field. Forty-six psychological reports written by psychologists, court consultants, have been analyzed with content analysis to identify typical judgment errors related to the following areas: (a) distortions in the attribution of causality, (b) inferential errors, and (c) epistemological inconsistencies. Results indicated that systematic errors of judgment, usually referred also as "the man in the street," are widely present in the forensic evaluations of specialist consultants. Clinical and practical implications are taken into account. This article could lead to significant benefits for clinical psychologists who want to deal with this sensitive issue and are interested in improving the quality of their contribution to the justice system.
Forensic Mental Health Assessment in Criminal Contexts
2022
This valuable compendium advances the understanding of mental health case law, making it highly accessible to practicing forensic professionals. Divided into two parts, the first section focuses on explaining important topics related to forensic psychological and forensic neuropsychological assessment, while the second section stands on its own as a collection of fascinating legal cases with high relevance to mental health and legal professionals interested in how mental health disorders impact criminal behavior among juveniles and adults. The book begins with an accessible primer on abnormal behavior, exploring the links between criminal behavior and mental health disorders. It goes on to thoroughly describe what goes into forensic psychological and forensic neuropsychological evaluations, including discussion about the Federal Rules of Evidence, as they pertain to evidence-generation during the mental health evaluation process. The book also focuses on psychometric concepts, including reliability, validity, sensitivity, and specificity, as well as an exploration of 'science' and 'the law' which includes a discussion about the difference between science and pseudoscience, the different sources of law (constitutions, statutes, and case law), and how the intellectually competitive practice of law is similar to the enterprise of science. Ethical issues faced by the forensic mental health worker are also addressed. The second section of the book, Legal Cases for the Forensic Mental Health Professional, is an alphabetical summary of important and interesting legal cases with relevance for mental health professionals. These cases offer realworld significance while summarizing complex legal decisions through a neuropsychological sieve, to allow both legal and psychological communities to better understand each other's professions. This book will be an invaluable resource for forensic psychologists, forensic neuropsychologists, forensic psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals whose work brings them into contact with the juvenile justice and adult criminal justice system. It will also be of interest to legal professionals, criminal justice departments, and law schools.
International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2009
The expanding practice of forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) has created a need for more detailed guidelines within the field. Toward that end, Heilbrun (2001) has described a set of principles developed using relevant legal, ethical, scientific, and professional authority. The extent to which these principles are currently used in practice, however, is unclear. Moreover, these principles have not yet been validated through the use of global expert judgment, an approach with significant precedent in this area. The current study examined the content of written FMHA reports from Pennsylvania applying these principles to the reports. In addition, a measure of global report quality was obtained through a selected group of experts, allowing the status of the principles to be gauged against the global measure of quality provided by experts. The results suggest a surprising lack of adherence to standard practice principles within FMHA. Within the study, those reports that did contain evidence of the use of principles, even slight, were seen as more relevant, more helpful to the decision-maker, and of higher quality. Future research and discussion of the legal, ethical, and moral implications of the impact of FMHA on both legal and mental health systems should be undertaken with the goal of improving performance of those professionals that choose to engage in FMHA.
Principles of Forensic Mental Health Assessment
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006
Forensic mental health assessment (FMHA) is a form of evaluation performed by a mental health professional to provide relevant clinical and scientific data to a legal decision maker or the litigants involved in civil or criminal proceedings. Such FMHA evaluations can be further specialized when the clinical and scientific data are primarily neuropsychological. This paper provides an adaptation of 29 recently derived principles of FMHA that have been described in two forms: general guidelines for application in FMHA, and guidelines for application to neuropsychological assessment in forensic contexts. Each principle is described, and the general guideline is compared with the highly specialized neuropsychological guideline. In this way, the applicability of such FMHA principles to forensic neuropsychological assessment is described.
Forensic Mental Health Evaluations: Reliability, Validity, Quality, and Other Minor Details
2013
Reliability is crucial to expert evidence. In cases involving mental health, the court usually relies on the opinions and testimony of forensic mental health expert witnesses (those experts who specialize in the intersection of mental health and the law). Even in adversarial proceedings, independent forensic experts appointed by the court are presumed objective and generally reliable. In other words, an opinion from one neutral expert should be similar to the opinion from another neutral expert when the two are considering the same case details.