Psycholo y and the Criminal Justice System, Jenkins vs USA By Neesha Murale, Year 11 North London Collegiate
I
n the world of criminal law as well as criminal justice, forensic psychologists bring forth behavioural research to the courtroom
to support the case at hand, and this plays a very large and extremely significant role in the field of criminal justice. Often, their main role is punishing and preventing crimes and the word forensic is literally defined
as, ‘the scientific method for investigation of
crime’. Therefore, forensic psychology is literally translated as the merger of law and psychology. People that tend to work in this department have the excruciating, but nevertheless thought provoking job of trying to figure out why certain people commit crimes, what type of people commit a crime, what are the trends in the crimes they commit and most crucial of them all how to prevent these people from committing the crimes. This works in conjunction with the judicial system, and works well in terms of mistakenly charging people of wrongful convictions. The contribution of psychology to the criminal justice system has been extremely vital, especially in terms of comprehension and accountability, why some criminals are served harsher sentences than others for relatively similar crimes. Once psychological reasoning can be applied, it can evidently be seen as one of the driving forces behind the punishments, consequences and the law.
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