Legal psychology
From Free net encyclopedia
Legal psychology involves the application of the study and practice of psychology to legal institutions and people who come into contact with the law. Legal psychology is a field which takes basic social and cognitive theories and principles and applies them to issues in the legal system such as eyewitness memory, criminal and civil jury decision-making, investigations and interviewing. Most notably, legal psychologists have been involved in areas such as wrongful convictions and actual innocence cases, jury and trial consulting, as well as Department of Justice guidelines on eyewitness identification.
Legal psychology and forensic psychology together form the field more generally recognized as "psychology and law". Following up on earlier efforts by psychologists to address legal issues, psychology and law became a field of study in the 1960s as part of an effort to enhance justice. The American Psychological Association's Division 41, the American Psychology-Law Society, is active, and there are similar societies in Britain and Europe.
There are now many legal psychology journals, including Law and Human Behavior, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, Psychology, Crime, and Law, and Journal of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. Other journals such as Applied Cognitive Psychology and Journal of Applied Psychology have recently published research from this field.
A broad survey of the entire field in North America, the UK, continental Europe, Australia and New Zealand is provided in Kapardis, Psychology and Law.
The field of psychology and law has been criticized for retreating from its initial critical focus on the law's role in maintaining injustice (see, e.g., article by Dennis Fox).