Forensic Psychology For Dummies (160 page)

Increasingly, companies are treating the possibility of workplace violence and harassment as serious matters that require planning and procedures to reduce incidents, and to deal with them if they occur. Although this area draws mainly on organisational psychology, forensic psychology can contribute to the central issues:

Screening potential employees, using psychological assessments to ensure that they don’t have characteristics that may make them likely to be violent or particularly vulnerable to harassment.

Helping to produce workplace risk audits that review the policies, procedures and design features that are in place to reduce the likelihood of violence and harassment.

Assessing the risks of various forms of threats and having in place processes for dealing with them if they arise.

Reducing the impact of any violence or harassment that does occur, such as through counselling those involved and reviewing procedures to limit the possibility of it re-occurring.

Working on Corporate Liability

In the US, one area of forensic psychology and criminology that is growing rapidly relates to the legal duty that business owners have ‘to exercise reasonable care that will prevent criminal attacks that could be anticipated’. Considering the possibility of offences against customers within retail or other premises, such as schools, restaurants and workplaces, draws on the understanding of criminal patterns of behaviour (the realm of criminologists) as well as on the forensic psychology of offending. Cases brought by shoppers mugged in a shopping mall have therefore opened up a broad area of professional consultancy to support or challenge their claims.

Experts offering evidence in these cases have to deal with a number of issues:

Demonstrating good practice and whether the key incident revealed that such levels were achieved or not.

Deciding on some clear and close link between any failure of the business to achieve appropriate standards and the offence that occurred.

Assessing the degree of damage to the victim. In some cases, this can be adjusted in relation to the assumed portion of the damage that was the consequence of the business’s failure.

Analysing Probity

If you are in a tough business negotiation, say another company wants to buy you out but you don’t want to sell, then besides the work your accountants may do, you’ll want answers about the sorts of people you are dealing with. Giving a psychological analysis of these people can therefore be very helpful.

I coined the term ‘probity profiling’ (because it considers the decency and integrity of the people being examined) to describe this sort of consultancy which I’ve provided on a few occasions and can see it’s an area of psychological expertise that is growing. Because the character of the person is being examined, especially for any traits that may indicate weaknesses or possible dishonesty, the process draws on many ideas from forensic psychology, such as indications that the person may minimise the significance of risk-taking or have difficulty relating effectively to others.

When I’ve carried out probity profiling of an individual for large companies, understandably, I haven’t been allowed to interview that person directly. Such an interview may suggest a lack of trust, or may be refused as irrelevant to the negotiations. So the analysis has to be carried out at a distance, not unlike the ‘psychological autopsy’ that I describe in Chapter 11. Available records of the person have to be examined. This is much easier with Internet searches. I’ve even found family photographs and other personal details on the Web that are very helpful in understanding a person I’ve never met, and probably never will.

Committing People to Institutions

Sometimes people need to be committed to a hospital or other institution for their own protection or to safeguard others. A medical professional takes this decision and in many countries the court process isn’t required. Notoriously, totalitarian regimes use the process as a way of locking dissidents away without the trouble of a legal process.

In recent years, many jurisdictions have enacted much clearer criteria for the operation of such draconian measures, putting more emphasis on the professional assessment of the individual being committed. Some key principles are emerging that forensic psychologists will draw on, if asked to contribute to such an assessment:

The person must demonstrate some clear mental illness.

The person has to be demonstrably incompetent in making decisions about treatment or medication.