The Clinical Assessment in the Legal Field: An Empirical Study of Bias and Limitations in Forensic Expertise

Abstract

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.

What Works for Promoting Health at School: Improving Programs against the Substance Abuse

“…The structure of each meeting must be characterized by an extremely flexible methodology, since the effectiveness of the program depends on how the person is living and what s/he is thinking, and not on the aims defined at the table prior to the meeting (Blumer, 1962 ; Iudici et al, 2015a , b ). Flexibility should not come from randomness or the absence of defined goals, but rather from an initial project hypothesis, built on the basis of a careful analysis of demand and of the real group needs.…”

Methodological Bias That Can Reduce (or Affect) the Process of Diagnostic Construction in Clinical Settings

“…The critical implications of this are to assess on the basis of personal experience and the cases dealt with, which are limited and partial. To overcome this implication, it may be useful to engage with colleagues or a team on a regular basis and use “third-party” or evidence-based elements valid for the area in question (Iudici et al, 2015).…”

The developing significance of context and function: Neuroscience and law

“…Evaluator bias, both explicit and implicit, is a key problem of ahistorical, non-contextual assessment (Iudici, Salvini, Faccio, & Castelnuovo, 2015), even when evaluators believe that they are bias free (Neal & Brodsky, 2016). For instance, in one federal capital case, an evaluator repeatedly asked the defendant during a psychiatric interview why he took his jacket off prior to shooting someone.…”