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Forensic Mental Health Consulting in Family Law: Where Have We Come From? Where Are We Going?
Published in Robert L. Kaufman, S. Margaret Lee, Forensic Mental Health Consulting in Family Law, 2014
The early direct or “real world” application of psychology and the law can be traced to the writings of Hugo Münsterberg (1906, 1908, 1909, 1914) at the beginning of the 20th century. By that time, many areas of science had been recognized as having application in the courtroom, starting with microscopy and toxicology. However, psychology, the relatively young but rapidly growing and arguably the leading American field of social science, had been excluded. In 1908, Münsterberg, a Harvard psychologist, thrust himself in the middle of debates as to whether psychology had any applicability in legal matters by commenting on the validity of the confession given by an accused murderer who had mental limitations. Though unsuccessful in getting the court to reconsider its actions in the specific case, Münsterberg went on to publish On the Witness Stand (1908), an edited collection of eight popular articles written about legal psychology. Among the topics considered by Münsterberg were the memories of witnesses, hypnosis and crime, and the reliability and veracity of confessions. While Münsterberg’s commentaries might seem crude or hyperbolic by today’s standards, his opinions opened up many areas of exploration within the legal arena pertinent to the science of psychology, for example pushing the issue that the accuracy of a witness’ testimony could be influenced by his/her state of mind and/or cognitive capacities.
The Consideration of Indigenous Peoples in High Stakes Evaluations of Risk
Published in International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2021
Madison F. E. Almond, Alana N. Cook, Jennifer E. Storey
A catalyst for the discussion of VRA and culture and how these factors interact for Indigenous peoples in Canada is the recent Ewert v Canada (2015, 2018) case. Mr. Ewert, who identified as Métis, made a legal claim against the Correctional Services Canada (CSC) for using VRA tools in his case. Mr. Ewert argued that these tools do not estimate risk in the same way for Indigenous peoples as they do for Caucasians because the tools were developed and normed on primarily Caucasian samples. He therefore claimed that the use of these tools violated his rights to life, liberty and security2 and to be equal before the law without discrimination3, as guaranteed to him by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). He also put forth that the CSC’s reliance on these tools for Indigenous offenders violated section 24 (1) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (1992)4 (CCRA). Further, he claimed that due to the potential of the VRA tools used in his case to assess his risk for violence incorrectly, his initial trial and sentencing outcome may not have been fair (Ewert v Canada,2015, 2018). To capture the key arguments in the case, professionals who gave expert testimony provided commentary on their involvement and the status of the field of legal psychology in a special issue of the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management (Haag, 2016). Haag et al. (2016) highlighted that the Ewert case was significant in bringing to light the need for assessment tools used for specific cultural groups to have norms relevant for those populations to ensure equal treatment before the law. One of the experts from the case, Hart (2016), commented that there is a notable lack of empirically sound research and evidence that can support or disprove the validity of using VRA tools with Indigenous peoples and due to this, confusion on how to apply tools to Indigenous evaluees (Haag, 2016).