APA Law

Forensic Psychology

Scenario: You are doing a presentation at the Metropolitan Police Academy in a major city. Your presentation for the afternoon is on the definition of truth when dealing with cases in which the defendant has a psychopathological issue that may have contributed to his or her commission of a crime. Attending this lecture will be a mixture of law enforcement officers, forensic psychologists, and prosecutors from the States Attorneys Office. You know that police, forensic psychologists, and prosecutors all believe in the truth but their definitions of truth may vary.

To avoid conflict in the lesson, you prepare a handout in the form of a white paper of 3 pages. You explore the definition of truth from the perspectives of each of the class participants (police, forensic psychologists, and prosecutors). Include the following in your white paper:

Explain the criteria that police investigators have in their finding of the truth as it relates to the investigative outcome of their respective cases.
Define the criteria the forensic psychologists use to determine the truth that they concludes about the defendant(s) in their respective cases.
Describe the method by which the prosecutors use in determining what they define as the truth in their respective cases.