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Social Sciences and Psychology

PSY 245 - Forensic Psychology

About this Class

This course is designed to be an introduction to the interaction between psychology and the legal system.  The contribution of psychology to such legal areas as family law, juvenile delinquency, criminal investigation, law enforcement, and correctional psychology will be surveyed.  Topics to be covered will include competency and insanity, assessing dangerousness, domestic violence, child abuse, sex offenders and psychopaths.  Legal standards regarding insanity, civil commitment and expert testimony will be reviewed.

  1. Understand the major professional practices of Forensic Psychologists including law enforcement, criminal investigations, competence, assessment practices, family law, eyewitness procedures, interrogation procedures, discrimination, sexual harassment, death penalty issues and public policy.
  2. Understand the use of profiling and the controversies surrounding the practice as well as the benefits.
  3. Understand the roles forensic experts and their contributions to the criminal and civil court justice, and their strengths and weaknesses as an expert witness. 
  4. Evaluate the techniques of psychology used in jury selection, witness testimony, and police procedure
  5. Understand the nature of legal rights of criminal defendant who suffer from a mental disorder, and identify the sources of individual rights vis-à-vis with the government’s right to deprive a mentally ill person of liberty by commitment into a mental hospital. 
  6. Recognize and analyze several prominent controversies impacting forensic mental health practitioners