Developmental Psycholegal Capacities

This chapter provides a history of theory and research, beginning in the 1970s, on the abilities of children and adolescents to make decisions related to their civil and criminal rights. In this context, the author describes his entry into the field of psychology and law in the 1970s with his seminal studies of juveniles’ capacities to waive Miranda rights. The chapter then inventories the growth of research, to the present, on children’s decision-making capacities in legal contexts. Research has focused especially on youths’ competence to make decisions as medical patients and as defendants, as well as perspectives on their reduced criminal culpability due to developmental immaturity.

Predictions of Violence

This chapter presents an historical account of the emergence of violence risk assessment as a central issue in what were portrayed as reforms of the mental health and criminal justice systems in the 1970s. The author traces his own involvement in the nascent field of psychology and law to his writing the first comprehensive review of research on the validity of violence risk assessment. The chapter then details the major theoretical, empirical, and policy strides that characterized violence risk assessment as it matured over the next several decades. The author concludes by reflecting on several issues whose resolution has proved elusive.

Forensic Mental Health Services and Competence to Stand Trial

This chapter traces the author’s entry into the field of psychology and law in the late 1960s and 1970s. His interests began when he was an undergraduate working in a state mental hospital during the early years of the deinstitutionalization movement, followed by his involvement in creating a pretrial diversion program while he was a graduate student. The chapter then turns to the author’s seminal studies of competence to stand trial and reviews the advances in the field that have led to more structured, reliable, and valid assessments of competence as well as community-based alternatives for assessment and treatment. The chapter concludes with an assessment of progress and ongoing challenges.

Applying Social Psychology to Law and the Legal Process

This chapter offers an overview of the early interweaving of law with social psychology and related social sciences on topics such as judicial decision-making, jury decision-making, eyewitness identification, procedural justice, persuasion, negotiation, psychological foundations of evidence, and the psychology of expert testimony and of aspects of the tort litigation system. Briefly discussed are the author’s two books—Social Psychology in Court and The Use/Nonuse/Misuse of Applied Social Research in the Courts—from the founding era that gathered together much of that already rich variety of work. The final third of the chapter describes some of the recent continuing work on a number of those topics.

Eyewitness Testimony

This chapter describes the author’s studies of human memory and eyewitness testimony that drew her into a long involvement with the legal system. The history describes efforts on the part of lawyers and eyewitness scientists to introduce expert testimony about witness memory into legal cases. The author discusses the contamination of accurate memories due to misinformation after the fact, such as witnesses talking to one another or erroneous media, and the role of repressed memories in court cases. The chapter includes a brief description of the rocky path from early resistance to ultimate appreciation of the science and its usefulness in legal cases.

Community Psychology, Public Policy, and Children

This chapter describes the author’s early development as an “accidental” community psychologist who contributed an ecological/community perspective to the field of law and psychology, especially regarding research and intervention projects in juvenile justice. The author’s supervision of more than 50 PhD dissertations during the past half-century has focused on the importance of social context to individual interactions as a theme, permeating his mentoring, teaching, and research. A few early projects, especially changing the culture of a juvenile correctional facility and exploring the landscape of child sexual abuse, have led to efforts to influence public policy regarding youth in the legal system. The central goal has been that understanding through research and theory should facilitate reasoned action.

Framing, Institutionalizing, and Nurturing Research in Psychology and Law

This chapter provides a personal narrative of the author’s role in the development of psychology and law as recognized subfield in psychology. The chapter considers his integrative model for combining the fields, including how his own work demonstrated the various types of possible interactions: psychological science studying law and law-related topics; psychologists aiding in the law’s administration; law affecting psychology science and practice; and using legal insights to improve psychology and create integrated psycholegal interventions. The chapter concludes by considering three approaches the author employed to institutionalize and nurture the field, including training programs, publication outlets, and convincing the psychological and legal communities of the importance of psychology and law as a newly emerging field of scholarship and practice.

Correctional Psychology

This chapter describes my 1970s entry into the field as a psychologist in a maximum-security prison. My examination of the roles, contributions, and failures of psychologists in the criminal justice system led to a series of conferences at Lake Wales, Florida, joining the correctional psychology program at University of Alabama, and testifying in class action suites about systemic flaws in prisons, This led in turn to my fascination with the process of testifying in court, starting a psychology–law journal, and facilitating court mandates to achieve prisoner classification in a state prison system. As the field of psychology and law shifted from correctional to forensic psychology, I became engaged in conceptualizing and applying knowledge to understanding and practice in both forensic and correctional psychology.

Mental Disability, Criminal Responsibility, and Civil Commitment

This chapter interweaves a history and analysis of these issues in the formative years of the American Psychology–Law Society with the author’s involvement in writing about it and in taking part in public debates and the creation of legislation. The author opens with autobiographical sketch that explains the development of his interest in law and psychology, criminal responsibility, and civil commitment. Later, he shares his perspective after years of involvement in these areas of study. The theoretical and practical problems and the author’s attempts to remedy them are then canvassed. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the present state of these issues.

The Founding and Early Years of the American Board of Forensic Psychology

This chapter chronicles the start of board certification by the American Board of Forensic Psychology and its partner, the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. It recapitulates the early organizational history, partly initiated when a small group of those involved in forensic psychology learned that psychiatry was rapidly moving toward establishing board certification in forensic psychiatry, which might threaten forensic psychologists’ claim to expertise in the field. This chapter also discusses the process of gaining acceptance as the sixth recognized specialty by the American Board of Professional Psychology and describes the growth of the field and our endeavors to expand it during the first decade and a half of its formal evolution.