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Psychologists’ Roles Within the Legal System

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Psychologists’ Roles within the Legal System
Introduction
There are many roles a forensic psychologist can choose to take part in, within the legal system, such as; the basic scientists, the applied scientists, policy evaluator, forensic evaluator, and consultant. Each of these roles has different duties/ responsibilities and may assist in or concentrate in different areas/ environments within the legal system. As a psychologist, within the legal system you will examine many individuals from the police officer to the victim. Being a psychologist within the legal system has many ethical obligations or issues that can arise. With this in mind, I will discuss more in detail the roles a psychologist plays in each environment within the legal system and some of the ethical issues.
Basic Scientist
There are many environments a forensic psychologist may choose to take part in. These environments are law enforcement, corrections, court system, and academic. Even though a psychologist can play a role in many environments, not all environments need every role of the psychologist.
”A basic scientist pursues knowledge for its own sake and studies a phenomenon for the satisfaction of understanding it and contributing to scientific advances in the area” (Greene, & Hailbrun, 2010 p18). As a basic scientist, there are some opportunities for the psychologists, in law enforcement and corrections. The psychologist can do training in a specific area; if the psychologist has knowledge of the particular area. The basic scientist usually conducts work in the areas of academics and clinical researchers. In the academia environment, the psychologist teaches at a university. The psychologist conducts researches for personal knowledge and may be an expert in that area. If the psychologist has extensive scientific knowledge of a topic in question, the courts can request results from a

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