Like many people who work with legal issues, Julie Goldenson has to debunk a lot of things people learn from TV. Dr. Goldenson, who is assistant program head of Psychology at the University of Guelph-Humber, is also a forensic psychologist and academic, and she says the job is nothing like what you see on CSI or Criminal Minds.
Tell me about the field of forensic psychology.
Broadly defined, forensic psychology relates to anything that involves the interplay between psychology and law. When people hear “forensic”, they tend to think you’re at a crime scene, scouring for clues and DNA evidence, but this portrayal is totally inaccurate.
While some psychologists do assist police with profiling, this does not tend to be the bulk of the work – particularly in Canada. Instead we are tasked with assessing individual clients and are often asked to provide opinion on legal issues; for example, whether someone was criminally responsible for his/her behavior, whether they are competent to stand trial, and assessment of risk for re-offending. While my role varies, the bulk of my work is assessing criminal offenders, providing a diagnosis, assessing the likelihood that they’ll offend again and then providing suggestions to reduce this risk.
How do you assess that level of risk?
To properly assess someone, I review a lot of files about past criminal and mental health history. Then I conduct a comprehensive interview, which can require several days of work. I’m sitting with them, asking questions, and doing cognitive and psychological tests. After that, I’ll often interview collateral people who know the defendant to try to learn more about their background and character. This type of work is often done by hospitals or corrections facilities, but I’m also sometimes hired by defense attorneys to assess their clients. This role is quite different than my role as a clinical psychologist, professor and researcher.
Why is that? How is forensic and clinical work different?
During a forensic assessment, you’re trying to take a neutral, non-partisan approach. In a clinical setting, one of your primary goals is to build a rapport and establish a relationship with someone. You want them (therapy clients) to open up and become comfortable with you. With the forensic interviews, it’s essential that the person understands that the information they share with me won’t be kept confidential. I try to allow them to make informed decisions and not to push or manipulate them. Sometimes that means stopping someone when they’re saying, ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this, but …’, and letting them call their lawyer to discuss the matter.
I make the non-partisan relationship explicit from the beginning because you never know what someone will share. Ultimately, though, honesty is generally useful to give people proper assessment and contextualize behavior, but in the rare case, sometimes it’s incriminating too.
Besides criminal cases, you also work on civil cases as well?
Yes, and with civil cases it’s usually a matter of assessing someone’s psychological injuries when they’re bringing forward a case or applying for disability. If, for example, someone has had a slip and fall, or can’t work because of a car accident, it would be incumbent upon me to assess the emotional and functioning impact of that. I assess the credibility of their claims, their truthfulness.
You also do psychological research, can you tell me about that?
I did my graduate studies in San Diego, and still have colleagues out there, so I’m doing research at the San Diego Centre for Justice, specifically the San Diego Centre for Counselling, where I’m co-director of research. It’s an institution that largely focuses on family violence, and in this case we’re hoping to better understand the assessment and treatment provided to a vulnerable population, youths who’ve had an adverse childhood experience. There’s a strong body of research that suggests that these experiences in childhood can have impactful outcomes in adulthood.
What are the results of this research? How will it be used?
The research is ongoing, so it’s too soon to speak about results, but together with several colleagues, we’re exploring the issues surrounding trauma and resilience. Eventually, we hope it will allow us to put in place better treatment measures and assessment protocols when working with youths who have experienced past trauma. We are also hoping to better understand resilience factors, and why some youth cope better than others.
Learn more about the University of Guelph-Humber's Psychology program.