Edited by Michiel Van der Wolf

This edited collection provides an interdisciplinary and cross-national perspective on safeguarding the quality of forensic assessment in sentencing offenders. Taking an in-depth look at seven different Western countries, each chapter provides an overview of the role of assessment in sentencing offenders, as well as a focus on formal ways in which the respective country’s legal system and disciplinary associations protect the quality of forensic assessment. Each chapter explores how to assure better decision making in individual cases based on assessments of psycholegal concepts such as mental disorder/insanity, criminal responsibility and dangerousness. Combining the perspectives of lawyers, legal scholars, and clinicians working in the field, this book is essential for those working in and with forensic assessment.

New York; London: Routledge, 2022. 281p.

Edited by Daniel A. Krauss and Joel D. Lieberman

"Expertise in Court: Perspectives on Testimony" is the second of a two-volume set on the "Psychology of the Courtroom". The authors, a renowned group of psychology and legal scholars, offer definitive coverage of the use of psychological expert testimony and evidence in a variety of legal contexts. They explore the controversies that surround it, from questions of its admissibility to its effects on eventual juror decisions. A wide range of topics are covered including system and estimator variables in eyewitness identification, expert testimony on psychological syndromes, the insanity defence and sexual harassment, how child sexual abuse is used by the courts, and recent research on false confessions. They also provide a comparative analysis exploring how different types of psychological expert testimony and evidence are used by different countries' legal systems. All the chapters conclude by making specific recommendations for how psychological research and information could be better utilized by courts around the world.

Abingtdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2009. 204p.

Edited by Bruce A. Arrigo

A critical look at the relationship between law and psychology.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004. 250p.

By Forbes Winslow.

“This treatise was one of the first attempts to outline criteria through which to determine the legitimacy of an insanity plea. This issue would be resolved later that year with the establishment of the McNaghten Rules, which this work undoubtedly influenced, and which are still applied in England today.”

London : H. Renshaw, 1843. 78p.

By M. Ralph Brown.

Psychology Apoplied to the Trial of Cases, to Crime and Its Treatment, and To Mental States and Processes, Indianapolis: “The aim of the author has been to collect and to explain within the covers of this small volume those principles of applied psychology which are of distinct benefit to the legal profession. Usefulness to the practicing lawyer has been the criterion upon which the inclusion or exclusion of material has been based. The field of applied legal psychology is at the present time almost an uncharted one. It is true that there are some few books, and a number of articles or chapters of books, upon this subject, yet on the whole they are so general in treatment, so difficult to obtain, or developed from some other angle than that of serving the lawyer in his work, that it was felt that a volume which would avoid these defects, and which would bring the subject down to date, would not be simply another volume on an old subject, but would be a really creative achievement.”

Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. 346p.

By George Frederick Arnold.

2d ed., Rev. “This work does not claim to be an original treatise on either Psychology or Law.”

Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, & Co., 1913. 607p.

By Hugo Munsterberg.

Essays on Psychology and Crime. “There are about fifty psychological laboratories in the United States alone. The average educated man has hitherto not noticed this. If he chances to hear of such places, he fancies that they serve for mental healing, or telepathic mysteries, or spiritistic performances. What else can a laboratory have to do with the mind? Has not the soul been for two thousand years the domain of the philosopher? What has psychology to do with electric batteries and intricate machines? Too often have I read such questions in the faces of visiting friends who came to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory in Emerson Hall and found, with surprise, twenty-seven rooms over spun with electric wires and filled with chronoscopes and kymographs and tachistoscopes and ergographs, and a mechanic busy at his work.”

New York: Doubleday, 1908. 269p.