Forensic Psychology

Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes. Within the subject of psychology, there are seventeen main fields within it, and even more subfields within each of those fields. These fields cover various categories, such as clinical, counseling, forensic, school, social, and sports psychology. The main field being focused on is Forensic Psychology, which is the intersection of the law and psychology. Both law enforcement and psychology play a huge role in this field due to interaction with criminals, attorneys, doctors, etc. Its emphasis is focusing on the reason why criminals commit the crimes they do as well as tracking whether or not mental illness is involved. In order to achieve the title of being a Forensic Psychologist,

Some main courses you will need to take involve math, science, english, speech, and social sciences. For math, you will need to take statistics in order to obtain the knowledge about independent and dependant variables, probability, and graphs. Science includes biology (genetics, brain anatomy, and evolution), psychology (how the brain works and develops), and forensic science (fingerprinting, crime labs). English and Speech are in order to gain the confidence in front of audiences such as attorneys and lawyers to testify well-written evidence to use in court for a case. Lastly, social sciences such as geography and sociology to see how people react to different cases as well as the different social norms in their society. Without these basic courses throughout high school, forensic psychology isn’t impossible but will be more challenging to pursue through college. When moving on to college, most of these courses will be the same yet more challenging. It will go into greater depth than the high school course did. Some courses to take in college include introductory psychology, chemistry, statistics, sociology, criminology, English composition, philosophy, and communications. All these courses lead up to a doctorate degree, which is the highest degree awarded by a graduate school. In order to have a psychology occupation, you will need to acquire a doctorate degree. Psychology

Anne and Curt Bartol also stated, “As recently as 25 years ago, the term forensic psychology had barely been introduced into psychological or legal literature. Today, as we have seen, it is a commonly encountered term” (Bartol). It is shown that there has been an increasing amount of courses based of forensic psychology and more colleges are starting to add this major to their courses. More people are starting to hear about forensic psychologists and what they do. Based on how little known forensic psychology was, it still isn’t getting as much credit as it deserves. Forensic Psychologists don’t start or complete cases. They only add information to the case in order to get it to a closing point with more evidence. Because of this, it isn’t as widespread as other psychologists in other fields, but it’s still growing. In 1895, scientists only studied and experimented eyewitness testimonies. About 1896, psychologists were starting to be able to actually become one of the people giving eyewitness testimonies at criminal trials instead of just studying them. But this was only limited to cases that weren’t taking over the job of medical specialists. In 1916, psychology started to join with law enforcement and led to the invention of the lie detector test. Lastly in 2001, forensic psychology finally became noticed as a