Psychological Assessment in Forensic Settings

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the field of forensic psychology. The chapter focuses on four general topics. First, the authors provide a definition of forensic psychology and a discussion of how it fits within clinical psychology. The authors argue that those psychologists who work in the field of forensic psychology must have specialized training and experience in the field. Second, the authors discuss the legal parameters within which forensic assessments are conducted. The authors note that the legal standards establish the parameters of the assessment and help focus the clinician's task. The authors introduce and discuss the psycholegal content analysis approach to forensic assessment. Next, the authors review some of the contemporary issues in forensic assessment, including the effect of the clinical versus actuarial debate for the field, the development of the legally informed practitioner model, the roles and limits of general psychological testing in forensic contexts, legal specificity, and training in forensic psychology. Finally, the authors discuss some future concerns that should be addressed in the field. In particular, they raise concerns about quality control in forensic assessment and identify areas that require further development (i.e., civil forensic assessment, forensic assessments with youth, women, and visible minorities).

An introduction to the issues of cross-cultural assessment inspired by Ewert v. Canada.

“…This statement was qualified with the observation that, at the time, a surprisingly small amount of research had been done on the validity of these measures within a cross-cultural context. Ogloff and Douglas (2003) further argued that the use of psychological tests and measures with a population that it had not been normed or validated on fell outside of ethical forensic practice. Indeed, selecting a measure that has not been validated on a particular population can have serious impacts for the individual being assessed.…”

Relevance and Coherence as Measures of Quality in Forensic Psychological Reports

“…Incoherent and contradictory information about the assessee may be reported in a forensic psychological report without this resulting in an incoherent report. What is critical according to the literature on forensic report writing is that this incoherence is acknowledged and discussed in the report (Grisso, 2010;Ogloff & Douglas, 2003). The distinction between incoherence in the information reported on, on the one hand, and the discussion of incoherent information, on the other, was taken into consideration in the first criteria used to study coherence.…”

La Preuve Psychologique Devant Les Tribunaux : Barrières Communicationnelles Et Épistémiques

“…Il va sans dire que ces différentes façons d'interpréter les mandats judiciaires et de cibler les sources d'information mènent à des rapports qui diffèrent quant à leur contenu. PourOgloff et Douglas (2003), la variabilité 'expertise psychologique est un enjeu de taille, car cela a le potentiel d'introduire un élément d'incertitude et de porter atteinte à l'équité du processus de prise de décision judiciaire. Ceci a d'ailleurs été dénoncé par leBarreau du Québec (2005) qui critique la disparité des pratiques utilisées par les experts.…”