eli5 what does a forensic psychologist do?
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They apply psychology to law.
If you’ve ever heard “Not guilty by reason of insanity”, or “Incompetent to stand trial”, that would be what they’re involved with.
Recommendations about competency, trial experts on how mental disorders can change behavior in a legally relevant sense, is an offender likely to reoffend, profiles for hiring people, and so on.
Part of legal theory is that in order to punish someone for certain crimes they must have acted *mens rea*, literal Latin translation to “guilty mind”, but effectively means “did they mean to do it”.
A common example is murder. In many states it is written that murder requires “malice aforethought”. Essentially meaning “did you mean to kill someone”. This is the difference between murder and manslaughter, something that internet legal comment sections seem to miss.. a lot. Killing someone is not automatically a murder charge. If someone is incapable or did not understand what they were doing would kill someone, like someone with severe mental illness or cognitive impairment, it would not satisfy malice aforethought.
A forensic psychologist would be the one called in to answer questions like “Did this person’s mental disorder mean that they were not in control during the crime?”
They would also be called in to answer questions like if a person is competent enough to aid in their own defense. In U.S Law it was decided in *Dusky v. United States* that one must be competent enough to aid in their own defense and understand what is going on in order to stand trial. It was found that someone with pretty heavy schizophrenia was unable to aid in their defense and their sentence was reduced as such. This is different than a mens rea issue than before since competency to stand trial can be different than knowingly doing something wrong.
If you’ve ever seen an “expert witness” in a crime TV show, they would do the real world version of that(though the real life versions are far more dull, I assure you). Come in and speak about a specialized topic in the case, opposed to a material witness which would explain things they saw or heard directly related to the case.
They will make recommendations on if an offender will likely reoffend before parole or how effective treatment was.
Provide profiles that the legal system uses, both for hiring agents and officers, and in some cases on offenders. Though the offender recommendation is pretty contentious topic in the community about its accuracy.
This isn’t my direct field of study but adjacent to mine so someone step in if they see something off.
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