What is the special section about?
This special issue in Practice Innovationsopens in new window is about new directions in forensic practice, considered from two perspectives. Articles written from the first perspective focus on practice areas that have not been fully discussed in forensic psychology before: working with a hearing-impaired population, developing approaches to collaborative divorce, working therapeutically with individuals who had been incarcerated but were ultimately exonerated and released, working with survivors of domestic violence, and working with children and adolescents in the criminal justice system. Each of these articles looks at the reasons the area of its focus is new, what modifications need to be made to traditional practice to expand forensic practice to this area, and the very specific ethical and professional issues raised by practice in the new setting. Articles written from the second perspective reflect the conceptual foundation of the traditional areas of forensic practice and explore what modifications are needed to expand the practice of forensic psychology.
What is the significance of the issue?
When people are asked to define forensic psychology, they often provide either clearly inaccurate notions (“forensic psychology is about profiling serial killers”) or partially correct ones (“forensic psychology deals with people who are found legally insane”). Forensic psychology is discussed from many different points of view in the special issue, illustrating the growing breadth of the field and the practice opportunities open to people who have adequate training in these new areas. Because the assessment of competence is critical to any practice area from an ethical point of view, a great deal of attention is paid not only to the different substantive areas but also to the competencies necessary for a practitioner to practice effectively and ethically. Some of these are very specific to forensic work, such as a thorough understanding of the legal system, recognition of how confidentiality may differ from the concept of privilege, and awareness of how multiple relationships can occur in forensic settings and ways to manage these.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
Readers will learn about the broad range of forensic practice and be able to integrate forensic practice with traditional interventions for treating more basic functional issues. In addition to some of the topics I have already mentioned, the articles explore issues that even the most skilled practitioner does not often consider, such as the relationship or lack of relationship between mental and emotional disorders and the specific requirements of legal tests. For instance, the fact that a person is psychotic does not equate to a lack of competency or an absence of criminal responsibility; rather, a practitioner must demonstrate how the mental disorder affects the requirements for a specific legal test. The legal concept of impairment is also important to understand in forensic work, and, once again, it is not necessarily equivalent to the symptoms of mental illness. Symptoms of a mental disorder may wax and wane, and therefore an understanding of how a symptom picture may change over time is important in assessing whether a given individual meets the standard evaluated using a specific legal test.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
Because the field of forensic psychology is developing so rapidly in so many different areas, it is imperative that clinicians in traditional practice as well as those in a hybrid or forensic practice become aware of the parameters of these new areas, how some of the old constructs still hold, and which constructs need to be modified so that a practitioner may render effective forensic services. As an example, few people entering forensic practice think about the different roles of forensic psychologists and the different constraints involved in being an examiner, a consultant who has examined a client, or a consultant who has not examined the client, even though various rules of evidence in different jurisdictions may affect the ability of certain experts to testify. All of these opportunities as well as constraints are explored in this issue.
This article is in the Forensic Psychology topic area.