Raina Lamade, PhD

Introduction to psychology and the law covering the professional practice of forensic psychology; case law and legal standards; research, and case examples. Topics include ethics, criminal and civil competencies, the insanity defense, risk assessment, involuntary commitment, expert and eyewitness testimony, jury selection, child custody, juvenile justice, problem solving courts, treatment of offenders, restorative justice, and police psychology.

Integrates research design, data analysis, data interpretation, and APA format report writing across the two dominant paradigms in contemporary psychology. The course includes the use of the SPSS statistical software for univariate parametric and some non-parametric models. The course contains a strong experiential component to prepare students for thesis writing.