Bad (Forensic) Psychology

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book to review.

I found this book fascinating.. Although I am not a forensic psychologist, I am a chartered educational psychologist and so many of the issues here were familiar to me. In the past few years there has been a continuing call for evidence based practice across all fields of psychology. Too often the evidence is not at all good and in some cases it seems that publication alone is enough to make a programme popular. In most cases this will not be particularly harmful. For example the use of social skills programmes in school. However, Forde makes it very clear that this is not the case in forensic psychology. In this case, the outcome for prisoners can be dire when they are recommended to go on certain programmes which do not have a solid evidence base. Parole outcomes can depend on the opinions of psychologists who base their reports on essentially subjective judgements and not on evidence.

This is a well argued and timely book. Prisons are costly and it is in all our interest to ensure that prisoners get the help they need.. This is an interesting book obviously very relevant for the profession but of general interest to us all.

Forde offers a sometimes uncomfortable call to the field of forensic psychology to embrace the science side of field. Drawing upon years of experience in the field, he highlights areas where he believes the practice just isn't supported by the research. He falls prone to making too wide reaching generalizations from some of his examples, but the caution he offers should be well noted by those practicing in the field. I especially enjoyed seeing him draw upon the work of Meehl, Tversky, and Kahneman. The observations made by these men about the fallibility of clinical judgment often fail to get the attention they deserve when training new psychologists. I would have enjoyed seeing him also address topics such as competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility evaluations.

I found this book interesting but a bit advanced for my, admittedly, somewhat limited knowledge of the subject matter. I also had some problems relating the UK systems and laws to the equivalent US ones. I was, however, fascinated by the parallels apparent in many fields that tend to reward programs, studies and research that are basically designed strictly to provide publishable data that may not be of value. This skewing of the scientific method in many fields is alarming to me. While we all know research programs must be funded, subjective data mined primarily to result in publication and funding not only is useless and wasteful but can actually bring harm to individuals in need of help and treatment.

This book has caused me to take a closer look at similar situations in the US and to attempt to evaluate data more objectively. Anyone with a scientific or research bent will, most likely, evaluate presented data and research conclusion with a different mindset after reading this book.