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Forensic Psychology Essay

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Forensic Psychology Essay
Forensic psychology is a broad and very interesting field to study. Forensic psychologists do many different things, but most fall under two main job headings. One of the two main job headings is an independent practitioner, and the other is a government-employed forensic psychologist. While there are other jobs with forensic psychologists with other main headings, these will be the two main jobs that will be used in this research paper. In particular, I will be mainly using the government employment job heading in relation to the court systems. This is a very broad and diverse field in itself, but mainly this paper will focus on the forensic psychologists witness’s analysis, as well as forensic psychology in the second amendment debate. This …show more content…
The start of the field was in 1908 when a man named Hugo Munsterberg started to push to have it recognized in the courtroom. This push was given a huge push when the U.S. Supreme Court used mostly social science evidence to decide Brown VS. Board of Education. This demonstrated that the Supreme Court acknowledged that social science is really a reputable source. “In 2001, forensic psychology was recognized as a specialty within the field of psychology by the Commission for the Recognition of Specialties and Proficiencies in Professional Psychology” (Varela, J. G.). After it was introduced, Psychologists began to help in all kinds of ways. Canada has led the groundbreaking research into the major fields of forensic psychology, including such fields as eyewitness memory, psychopathy, victimology, criminal behavior, rehabilitation, and risk assessment. These fields all help the justice system convict the right person for the right crime. One of the ways forensic psychologists help the court system is when witnesses testify in court, forensic psychologists analyze them to see if they are mentally prepared to testify in court. For example, if a person needs to testify in court about seeing someone rob a store, the forensic psychologists analyze them to see how mentally ready they

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