Law and psychology in Canada: The need for training and research.

Abstract

Because most laws are enacted to regulate human behaviour, the law must make various assumptions about the way humans act and how those actions can be controlled. The social scientific knowledge and skills of psychologists, therefore, have many broad applications to the law. Indeed, law and psychology is a fast developing and important field. Unfortunately, the full potential of law and psychology has not yet been realized in Canada. In fact, there are no joint law and psychology graduate programmes in our country, and a majority of the current psychological research has been narrowly focussed on forensic issues. Hence, there is a great need for an increase in training and research in this area in Canada to address unique Canadian issues and to avoid continued dependence on American psycholegal scholars.

Training and career options in psychology and law

“…Although forensic clinical psychology accounts for a large portion of psycholegal activity, there is considerable breadth to psycholegal scholarship (e.g., Ogloff, 1990;Roesch et al, 1986). Just as it is true that psycholegal research should not concentrate solely on juries and eyewitness issues (Saks, 1986), neither should psycholegal training and careers focus solely on forensics (see, e.g., Roesch, 1990).…”

Training in law and psychology: Models from the Villanova conference.

“…Within the broad spectrum that encompasses law and psychology, relatively little attention has been paid to nonclinical or social science training at the graduate level (Ogloff, 1990;Ogloff et al, 1996). Because many important areas of law fall outside the traditional bounds of the clinical psychology-law interface (Ogloff, 1990;Roesch, 1990), it is important to develop programs to train legal psychologists to work more comprehensively.…”

“…Because many important areas of law fall outside the traditional bounds of the clinical psychology-law interface (Ogloff, 1990;Roesch, 1990), it is important to develop programs to train legal psychologists to work more comprehensively. Yet, few such programs exist; indeed, for most departments, education is limited to one or two courses in social science and the law.…”

Expertise psycho-juridique: Une évaluation de deux types de rapports et de leur influence sur la perception de jurés potentiels.

“…La documentation scientifique révèle l'existence de plusieurs catégories de psychologues experts, couvrant chacun un grand nombre d'activités distinctes (voir Ogloff, 1990). Dans le cadre Expertise Psycho-Juridlque 4 de cette recherche, l'attention sera surtout mise sur les deux catégories d'experts jugées comme les plus importantes et les mieux connues dans la pratique de l'expertise psycho-juridique: soit le psychologue "clinicien-évaluateur" d'un cOté et les psychologues "sociaux, expérimentaux et cognitifs" de l'autre.…”

“…La documentation scientifique révèle que pour la première moitié du vingtième siècle, la quasi-totalité des recherches portant sur la psychologie juridique furent menées aux Etats-Unis en psychologie sociale, expérimentale et cognitive (Loh, 1981 (Ogloff, 1990).…”