CRJS420 DB4

CRJS420-DB4

Name

Class

Date

Professor

CRJS420-DB4

A forensic psychologist is responsible to listening to their clients and keeping what they say confidential. The judge has requested information on the inmate’s progress in prison and any decisions that will be made by the court will be based on this report and the guilty verdict handed down by the court. The forensic psychologist may release information to the court on the progress of the inmate but not about any private disclosure they made. When a client speaks to a forensic psychologist they have an expectation of privacy. The role of the forensic psychologist is to provide information from the judge but they also have an obligation to keep the confidence of the client.

The forensic psychologist has an ethical duty to uphold the client/psychologist privilege. A forensic psychologist has the same obligation to act in accordance with the Ethical Principles of Psychologist and Code of Conduct (Cronin, 2009). In other words the forensic psychologist has a responsibility to adhere to ethical principles, such as informed consent, where the client is fully aware the private disclosures they made to the forensic psychologist will be revealed to the judge. If the client wanted the court to know his son really committed the crime he would inform the court.

If the forensic psychologist were to ignore their ethical obligation not to reveal private disclosures by a client the result would be the confidentiality of the client would be broken and the psychologist would be responsible for breaking their oath. The forensic psychologist could lose their license to practice and the judge would only ignore the information that was provided by the forensic psychologists. Just because the forensic psychologist reveals the private confidence of their client does not mean the court will take any action or even consider this information when determining whether or not they should be released early.

References

Cronin, C. (2009). Ethical Practice within Forensic Psychology. Retrieved June 23, 2013 from

http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/ethics-in-forensic-psychology.html