The Role of the Police Psychologist

The role of the police psychologist

Introduction

In this paper we try to define the role of police psychologist and its significance in the field of forensic psychology. The field of police psychology is basically a sub-genre of forensic psychology aimed at addressing the issues that arise pertaining to police personnel and public safety workers. The police psychologists have various roles in the field of psychology and especially in the police force. They are responsible for the carrying out pre-employment review of candidates for the positions in the police department and public safety department. The police psychologists are also responsible for the verification of the fitness level of duty level police officers and especially those who are known to not have the required fitness to be able to perform well on the job. This is specifically done to make sure that the persons allocated for law enforcement are themselves fit, both physically and mentally, in order to take important decisions and act on one’s feet (Davis, (n.d)). Practice of forensic psychology

Forensic Psychologists who work in correctional facilities have certification in academic training in offender management, correctional philosophy, forensic report writing and interventions to reduce recidivism. Those who work as correctional psychologists must have some minimum qualifications. Moreover, it is true that not all general psychologists have received a doctorates degree. Even though the majority correctional psychologists in the federal correctional facilities have received a doctorates, it appears that those who work at the local and state correctional centers are more likely to have received a master’s degree or accreditations of advanced study. Nonetheless, psychologists at all stages evidently offer beneficial services to corrections. This is reliable with the AACP (2000) requirements, which upholds that the equivalent level of expert practice is mandatory regardless training or academic background of the service provider (Bartol & Bartol, 2012).

Role of police psychologist

The role of a police psychologist has many other responsibilities and most of these responsibilities are directed towards the strict adherence to standards of duty that must be maintained in order to be able to perform with moral and sensitivity to the job of protecting the citizens. The police officers and other public safety officers are required to be in perfect shape when performing their duties and therefore it is required of them to be absolutely in good health and good mind to be able to take the right decisions on their job as their decisions are very critical and has many critical outcomes in society. Therefore keeping the above in mind the field of police psychology was developed and studied upon and implemented in order to make sure that the public safety officers cannot be blamed for any wrongdoings or taking the wrong decisions as result of not following procedures and thus it would result in a bad name for the individuals who have the responsibility to protect the society in times of adversity and other crisis situations.

As already mentioned above the roles of a police psychologist is absolutely critical when it comes to determining the safety of the society. Therefore, keeping the above statement in mind, we would define the role of police psychologist in detail here (Nicoletti, 2011). The primary objectives of the police psychologist include training police officers on the ways of working and taking the right decisions in crisis situations which includes negotiating with hostages and criminals and even barricading and surrounding criminals. It basically includes teaching the police about the crime prevention techniques and the number of ways in which crimes can be prevented and the criminals can be taken into custody. The provision of clinical counselling is also made for police officers and their families as these officers and their families are continuously affected by the adverse conditions of the job of a police officer. It is a known fact that the police are always in a state of peril because of the type of their job and it is their duty to protect the society against crimes and therefore they are the first ones to face the wrath from the criminals when the police try to stop the criminals. As a result the police officer and their families often go through a lot of trauma and stress as a direct impact of the adversaries on the job. The counselling programs that are provided to the police officers include building the resilience level, life skills and peer counselling. With peer counselling the police officers are always able to relate to the stress that are faced by other police officers who go through the same kind of trauma but are able to deal with it better. As a matter of fact it is often seen that many police officers and public safety officials retire early or take up different jobs as a direct result of the trauma that they face as police officers. Therefore the counselling sessions are extremely important for the police officers who are constantly living under threat and many have lost their lives trying to protect the society. Keeping this mind it can be said the police officers on the job have a duty to protect the society due to which the field of police psychology has developed and defined different standards for them.

In contemporary times, the police psychologists have a diverse role in the law enforcement departments around the world. To cite a very basic example of their daily activities, it involves individual and group consultation, candidate review and evaluation, police officer selection, hostage negotiation, stress management, counselling of police officers and their families. The police psychologists have other duties as well which include police management and supervisory training, police academy teaching and instruction, research and development, police or community critical incident debriefing, urban crime prevention programs, advanced officer training, diagnosing and solving organizational, managerial or supervisory problems, the implementation of human resource development programs, employee assistance programs and "burn-out" prevention programs. The “burn out” prevention programs are basically to tackle the situations where the police officers suffer a burn out in their job which has a constant threat to their lives and therefore face a lot of trauma while handling the criminals. When all of the above mentioned responsibilities are taken together it can be said that the entire idea of police psychology is to increase the welfare of the entire public safety department which will allow for further growth of the department and also for the welfare