HOW DO WE DEFINE THIS RELATIONSHIP?
Ideally when someone speaks about psychology and law, most people assume both fields to be located on different tangents or perhaps like a Venn diagram, have a sliver of an area. However, the more we come across examples in between human behaviour and the legal system, the broader the common ground becomes.
‘Psychology and law’ is a field primarily consisting of forensic and legal psychology. Forensic psychology as defined by the American Psychological Association, is the application of clinical specialties to the legal arena. Legal psychology involves the application of the study and practice of psychology to legal institutions and people who come into contact with the law.
Overall the field of psychology and law uses tools, research methods and findings of social, cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology to examine legal assumptions, test and see if they work, and think about ways to make them better.
WHAT IS LEGAL AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY?
Above mentioned definitions sound synonymous as the both areas fall under the same umbrella, but forensic psychologists work directly with suspects and criminals in the criminal justice system. Their main goal is to evaluate clients (criminals, accused) to determine if they are mentally healthy, thus forensic is backed up by clinical psychology. Legal psychologists, on the other hand, work with police officers and lawyers. They also conduct research studies on patterns of behaviour in legal processes and in the legal system to achieve an improvement in justice. Legal psychology as aspects of social psychology.
Legal psychology is a field of psychology which has originated recently in the 1960s to enhance justice though the originating concern has lessened overtime. It encompasses eyewitness memory, interviewing, investigations and Jury decision making, to differentiate between the clinical part of psychology and law under Forensic psychology. Legal psychology involves empirical psychological research of the law, legal institutions and people who come in contact with the law. Legal psychologists take basic social, cognitive and experimental psychology’s principles and apply them to issues in the legal systems.
The first seeds of forensic psychology were planted in 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt, often referred to as the father of psychology, founded his first lab in Germany. In civil and criminal cases, forensic psychologists tend to evaluate individuals to determine questions such as competency to stand trial, relationship of a mental disorder to an accident or crime, and potential for future dangerous behaviour. They work on not only conducting interviews and administering psychological tests, but also gather a forensic history, which incorporates information such as hospital records, police reports, and statements of witnesses.
American psychology law society is an upcoming branch which includes discussions and research on psychologists working in legal issues, legal personnel on psychological issues as well as education and psychological assistance to legal students and psychology students in their respective fields.
Career opportunities in Psychology and Law:
By explaining the career opportunities, we can understand the scope of this field with real life application of the theory and research.
Psychologists who work in the legal setting can have various roles.
- Aid judges and jurors: To work with Civil litigants and criminal defendants to help jurors and judges make better decisions about those individuals. Work in legal decision making, which is- how jurors make decisions about trial evidence, eyewitness identification issues, how attorneys make decisions about which jurors they might want to remove from a jury. Social psychologists play a quintessential role in this aspect.
- Forensic clinical psychologists also run private practices in which lawyers contact them to evaluate their client or the other side’s client to help them answer a specific legal issue.
- Another sub-field is procedural justice, so psychologists play a role in how people make decisions on questions such as “Have I been treated justly”.
- Intergroup issues involving stereotyping, prejudice, group diversity and in particular how they play out in a legal setting.
- Juvenile justice policy and risk assessment for youth to determine who is likely to continue to be violent or continue to be engaging in delinquent behaviour.
- Research on juror decision making and how lay people participate in the legal system.
- Personal disorder psychopathy involves working with psychopaths, mostly involved in the criminal justice system.
- Social psychology, teaching research students and conducting their own research.
The people mentioned above come from areas such as being a professor in a Criminal Justice college adopting social psychology, professors in American Psychology-Law society, professors from Medical schools, Forensic Clinical Psychologists, Minority Affairs Committees.
IMPACT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND LAW:
Psychologists in this field say their work brings in new information regarding, in a not-so-discovered field, opportunities to bring about large systemic change. They believe the future scope of this field is broad, ample areas that could benefit from research. Clinicians are required who can contribute their expertise in various ways, mainly to help the court system reach overall better decisions about the offenders whose cases are being presented every day. Focussing on bigger umbrella questions as a group like “What causes criminal offending?”.
To be able to change criminal justice systems as per human behaviour, to provide people with fair treatment, serve as expert witnesses in cases based on research they are familiar with and testify in cases on issues concerning racial bias, what constitutes racial bias. This speciality can produce research that helps inform the Supreme Court’s decisions which sets law for people. For example how research on adolescent brain development and psychosocial maturity informed the Supreme Court’s decision that it was not constitutional to use the death penalty or life sentences without the possibility of parole for adolescents.
Working with juvenile justice systems and delinquent children to not only make the system more developmentally appropriate but also for the results to end up in better outcomes regarding public safety, brighter youth functioning and societal pace. To make the system more inclined towards how people actually function, to work for adolescents and society hand in hand rather than representing only either side. Juvenile justice system in terms of children and families, children’s testimonies in court, police interviews, disparities between people of colour, arrest rate and stop and frisk as compared to people who were not of colour, language barriers with regards to rights instruments, bringing in changes in public policies.
This work has an impact that is system-wide, which leads to changes in the laws for better, along with massively impacting an individual’s life by even getting people off death rows on appeals- to see them in a more humane shape and form rather than systemic disturbances. Psychology with law offers you opportunities to have the system handle individuals in a gentler manner. Most of the gratitude comes from how the in-field research is visible in the practical world on a scale whose wingspan is perhaps as large as the one which causes such crimes in the first place.
CONCLUSION:
The room between the legal system and human behaviour is filled by psychologists in a way of showcasing how they can contribute to how the legal system deals with people. It is still an upcoming subject, hence conferences are held to empower and mentor students by field-leaders themselves. This not only opens up a broader wingspan, it principally inculcates humanity in rules.
YLCC would like to thank Meha Bhatt for her valuable insights in this article.
