...A forensic psychologist views a client or defendant differently than a traditional clinical psychologist. Seeing a situation from a client’s point of view or empathizing with a patient is not something a forensic psychologist will do. Traditional psychological tests and interview procedures are usually not applicable when dealing with a forensic situation. In forensic evaluations it is important to assess the consistency of factual information. Forensic psychology is the application of psychology to the criminal justice system. This is however, different from forensic science. While a forensic psychology deals with legal issues, such as public policies, new laws, competency, and whether a person is sane at the time of a crime, they focus on the psychological perspectives involved in the legal system. Some examples of when forensic psychology is used in the criminal justice system are treating mentally ill offenders, consulting with attorneys, jury selection, serving as an expert witness, analyzing a criminal’s mind and intent, and criminal profiling. There are some forensic psychologists that choose to focus on research, which could range from the examination of eyewitness testimony, to improving interrogation methods. There are also forensic psychologists that focus on public policy, such as designing correctional facilities and prisons. In 1901 a man named William Stern studied memory by asking students to study a picture for forty-five seconds, and then recall...
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...Forensic Psychology Name Institution Date Forensic Psychology refers to the formal intersection between the scientific section of psychology and the criminal justice systems. It involves having a thorough understanding of the criminal systems applied in various jurisdictions by constantly evaluating them at a global perspective (Bartol &Bartol, 2012). The scientific aspect of it takes this information and analyses this information and interrelates it with attorney generals, judges and other legal professionals. Moreover, the field is based on scrutinizing witness testimonies in an attempt to check its validity and make informed decisions when dealing with ambiguous court cases. The roles of forensic psychologists are multivariate. This is because they perform diverse roles according to the settings, circumstances and nature of the job. For instance, they train and evaluate police officers and, members of other law enforcement organizations. They also advise judges in determining court cases (Bartol &Bartol, 2012). For instance, when the juries are dealing with ambiguous court cases of rape, insanity or murder, all arising from mental in-capabilities of the assailants, forensic psychologies are called based on their expertise and experience to examine, evaluate and give recommendations concerning the sentencing of the culprits. Because of these several but crucial responsibilities, the field of forensic psychologist...
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...Forensic Psychology- Criminal Profiling Forensic psychology is a field in the study of psychology that combines the study of systematic study of behaviors and the law. Being a forensic psychologist entails having psychological insight and knowing the functioning and understanding the legal and criminal justice system. Some of these jobs include victim services, addiction services, jury research, family services, and eyewitness identification (Crossman 1). This job entails a great level of personality analysis and being able to get people to open up about their emotions and motives. A person is given the responsibility to figure out what causes a criminal to commit crimes, how to spot a type of person who is inclined to commit certain types of crimes, and lastly how to prevent people from committing felonies. The need for a forensic psychologist is their ability to narrow down the suspect list or give the investigators a lead to the motives of the crime. Forensic psychologists also work with criminals in rehabilitation centers to help prevent these criminals from committing felonies when they get released from jail. They also aim to prevent people that are of risk of going into a life of crime (Pinnozotto 1). The education that goes into becoming a forensic psychologist includes focusing on the majors’ psychology, criminology, and forensics. Most students study psychology with a focus in criminology. Some students, on the other hand, do it the other way around and bachelors...
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...Forensic psychology is concerned with how psychology applies to the criminal justice system. Psychologists interested in this line of applied work may be found working in prisons, jails, rehabilitation centers, police departments, law firms, schools, government agencies. They may work directly with attorneys, defendants, offenders, victims or with patients within the state's corrections or rehabilitation centers. So i’m gonna focus on the role of psychology that shaped the jail policies. One of the event that changed the way people were treated in prisons for the last 25-30 years was the stanford prison experiment. Stanford experiment was conducted in 1973 by craig haney and Philip zimbardo. A group of healthy, normal college students were temporily but dramatically transformed in the course of six days spent in a prison like environment. Emotionally strong college students, they suffered acute psychological trauma and breakdowns. The guards too who also had been carefully chosen on the basis of their normal average scores on variety of personal measures quickly internalized their randomly assigned role. The goal in conducting the SPE was to extend that basic perspective- emphasizing the potency of social situations. The study represented an experimental demonstration of the extraordinary power of institutional environments to influence those who passed through them. The behavior of the prisoners and guards in the simulated environment had a remarkable similarity to patterns...
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...Lacey Smith January 20, 2015 CJ 233: Forensic Psychology Professor Araujo Unit 9 Final Project I have a client in which has been committed to the psychiatric facility for a restoration of competency. This was after the judge in his case determined that he was not competent enough to stand trial and was sentenced to the psychiatric facility for treatment. The client has been here at the facility for three months now and the judge has ordered for a new competency evaluation to be completed. In order to complete the evaluation I need to know exactly why my client has been brought here. I understand that he was on trial for murder but I need to know more about the case so I need to read his file because I feel as though I should familiarize myself with the entire case. According to the police report the incident occurred on February the fourth of last year. The police officers were responding to a reported shooting at the home of John and Jane Wilson. The police officers arrived to the scene they found the body of John Wilson leaning against the house on the steps that enter into the kitchen. The police also found Jane Wilson lying with her head in her husband’s lap. The bodies were covered in blood and there were not any pulses on either of the bodies. The witnesses who had discovered the bodies of the Wilson’s were family friends in which upon their arrival to the Wilson home they were meet by the Wilson’s son Edward who came out of the house and told them to leave because...
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...Forensic Psychologists can play a number of key roles in a criminal investigation. Immediately following a crime a forensic psychologist may be asked to act as a criminal profiler. It has over the years become the love child of numerous television programs, movies, and crime novels. Criminal profiling involves the psychologist using his understanding of human behavior, motivation, and pathology so that he/she can create a psychological profile of the offender. The profiles can be surprisingly accurate. From observations of the crime scene one can infer the behavioral characteristics of the individual who created it. To a profiler everyone is a slave to his or her psychological makeup. In turn, profilers use their knowledge of which the typical offender is that bears these characteristics and then predicts not only how the investigators can expect the offender to behave in the future, but also what their physical appearance will likely be. While profiling may seem very exciting, few psychologists are ever involved in this field. Psychological knowledge has been applied to many more areas of investigative police work, from the police interrogation to the police line-up. Both of these areas have prospered greatly from psychological research. Outside of the "front-end" operations of police work there is numerous opportunities for the application of forensic psychology. In the court system, Forensic Psychologists are frequently used for both criminal and civil cases. In the criminal...
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...It was learned during week one that forensic psychology is more than what you see on television. It has been the common misconception that the field of forensic psychology is just those we see investigating the crime scene looking for the criminal. It was learned that this specific field is used in many parts of the court system such as criminal and civil law. A forensic psychologist would need to determine the mens rea of the exact crime in a criminal suit whereas they would be looking at something different in a civil case. A civil case would be about the wrongs done to an individual. A forensic psychologist could be called as a witness in a criminal trial for either the prosecution or the defense to scientifically explain the evidence found during the investigation. They could be called to the stand to explain the behavior of a certain individual as long as it is in within the scope of their job,...
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...Course: CJ 233: Introduction of Forensic Psychology Instructor: Doctor Findley Assignment: Unit 9 Final Assignment Total Points: 150 Due Date: November 24, 2015 Name: Donna Marie Brown (Donnabrown119) Unit 9: Final Project: You Are a Forensic Psychologist Kaplan University Donna Brown119 Monday, November 23, 2015 Deviant behavior is any behavior that is contrary to the dominant norms of society. There are many different theories on what causes a person to perform deviant behavior, including biological explanations, psychological explanations, and sociological explanations. Numerous theories have been established to explain criminal behavior. While some theories are not as common, others have evolved and are used in many criminal studies today. Up-to-date criminologists combine the most relevant characteristics of sociology, psychology, biological, and social-psychological to advance their understanding of criminal behavior. Professionals in this field study factors that contribute to criminal activities, make relevant policy recommendations and draw conclusions based on those assessments. (Varying Theories on Crime, 2015) Several theories attempt to explain criminal behavior. Most theories assume: * Crime is part of human nature. * Crime is based on biological, psychological, and/or economic aspects. One of the earliest approaches to explaining the causes of crime was the classical theory, which is defined as a product of the Enlightenment,...
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...Criminal Profiling: The Public Face of Forensic Psychology Jason Evans Brandman University Table of contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Literature review 4 Discussion 7 Personal interest in the topic 10 References 11 Abstract The utilisation of psychological concepts has been extended in many fields in seeking to enhance understanding of human behaviours. Forensic psychology is one of the various psychological filed which have developed out of the necessity to apply psychology in different fields. This article discusses the element of forensic psychology in relation to the various issues arising within the field. A discussion of the various issues highlights ethical aspects as the main causes of many challenges faced in the field. The complexity of the setting under which the psychological practice is conducted makes the topic become one of the interesting psychological segments that can be studied. Introduction Forensic psychology can be defined as the utilisation of psychological concepts, skills, and insights in seeking to enhance the understanding of various elements of legal and criminal justice systems. Within the context of the subject various psychological and legal aspects become combined in seeking to understand the functioning and operations of criminal systems (Davies & Beech, 2012). This approach to criminal justice involves various activities involved in the delivery of justice, ranging from the enforcement to treatment of suspects...
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...Study#3 Forensic Psychology: Information Recall / Eyewitness Testimony ABS200 Instructor Clark August 18, 2014 Ashford University Applied behavioral science can be defined as a science that bases its concepts on the observations and learnings of human behavior. Science itself is all observation and learning, we try and try experiments in order to come to one or several conclusions and we observe in order to discover new things. In order to understand behaviors and what causes people do to the things they do we must observe not only the person but their surroundings and daily habits in order to understand them. In behavioral science there are many different sub-sections that can vary from clinical to criminal. Within these different sections we learn by making observations not just of one person but of every person we come across in our work and therefore have to learn how to make treatments based on these observations. In criminal cases, most of the time we are analyzing not only why a person has committed the crime they have committed but what drove them to become the person that they are. In many cases there is a mental illness whether treated or untreated that can cause the person to become unbalanced and therefore dangerous. Other times it is caused by childhood events which cause mental trauma which causes the person to act out in a certain manner. Cognitive psychology goes hand in hand with handling eye-witness testimony. With this type of psychology we use different...
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...While not everyone is aware, it is more than evident that psychology and the legal system are intertwined in many different ways. After having the chance to observe court case in real life, it is even more clear to me how these two fields merge into one another, creating an entirely different field of forensic psychology. I will be sharing my observations and experience of my time observing a real-life court case trial before my own eyes and how this can be related to the course information I have learned in this class this semester. I attended court on Tuesday, February 27th, at the Black Hawk County Courthouse in Waterloo, Iowa. My observation lasted for about two hours between 2 p.m. and 4 pm. During my time, I witnessed the voir dire...
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...produced) became one of the very first on the psychology of testimony, and inspired one of the most significant studies in the history of forensic psychology. Fascinated by Cattell’s findings, psychologist Louis William Stern - along with the help of criminologist F.V. Liszt - attempted to bring Cattell’s design to life by conducting a staged quarrel within the walls...
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...the case of two African American identical twins girls brutally murdering their mother and then being sentenced to 30 years in prison each. I will also go into detail about how each of the five subareas of forensic psychology could have potentially played a role in this case whether it helps the defendant or the victim. It is also important to understand the role of the forensic psychologist because many people are only able to associate them with popular television shows. Case/Topic Description On the afternoon of January 13, 2010, at the age of 34, Jarmecca Yvonne "Nikki" Whitehead was found brutally murdered in the bathroom of her boyfriend’s home in Conyers, Georgia by her identical twin daughters...
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...Civil Action Assignment 3 1. An expert witness is a witness who has knowledge beyond that of the ordinary lay person enabling him/her to give testimony regarding an issue that requires expertise to understand. Experts are allowed to give opinion testimony which a non-expert witness may be prohibited from testifying to. 2. Both sides had to bring in experts in regards to the chemicals that the wells were contaminated with. Then they had to bring in experts in ground water movement, they had to prove chemicals were dumped, and had to prove the chemicals made the people sick. Proving of causation was the reason why so many experts were called on. Every aspect of the evidence had to be proven to be as solid as possible to be allowed in court. 3. Hydrogeologist, Geologist, Engineering Geologist, Soil scientists, Geochemist 4. The first issue is money. Experts are paid for their time and even though it creates a substantial incentive for the expert to advocate a party's position that is not supported by available research and data. This problem is particularly acute with the professional witness, who makes her living testifying as an expert. A professional witness is highly motivated out of self interest to develop relationships with lawyers because those relationships are the expert's lifeblood. The more effective the expert is in advancing the lawyer's case, the greater the likelihood the expert will be retained again. The Safeguards of the Adversary System...
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...Assignment: Unit 2: Psychologists’ Roles in Criminal Justice Total Points: 100 Due Date: October 6, 2015 Name: Donna Marie Brown (Donnabrown119) Course: Intro to Forensic Psychology Instructor: Doctor Findley Unit 2: Psychologists’ Roles in Criminal Justice Kaplan University Donna Brown Tuesday, September 29, 2015 Psychologists’ Roles within the Legal System Introduction A forensic psychologist has many roles to participate in within the legal system. This would include: the basic scientists, the applied scientists, policy evaluator, and the consultant. These roles have different responsibilities and they might even help in or give attention to different areas and environments within the legal system. Within the legal system, a psychologist can examine several personalities which includes the arresting police officer to the actual victim. There are actually many ethical responsibilities and matters that can ascend. And now I will elaborate on the roles that the psychologist plays in each environment. (Greene, & Heilbrun, 2013) Basic Scientist A basic scientist engages in knowledge, and this is for its own sake. The scientist analyses an occurrence for the fulfillment of comprehending it and providing a scientific enhancement. (Greene & Hailbrun, 2013) Law Enforcement and Corrections are two opportunities of the basic scientist. As long as the psychologist has a comprehension of a specific area, psychologists can participate in educating...
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