Legal psychology is dedicated to evaluating, explaining, preventing and treating relational, behavioral and psychological phenomena that affect the legal conduct of individuals.
Latin and Greek. These are the languages from which the etymological origin of the two words that give shape to the term at hand comes. Specifically, we can determine that psychology is made up of two Greek words: psyche , which means “soul,” and logia , which can be translated as “the study of.”
For its part, the legal word emanates from the Latin word iuridicus , which in turn is the result of the sum of ius , which is synonymous with "Law", and the verb dicere , which is equivalent to "say".
What is legal psychology
Legal psychology includes the study, explanation, evaluation, prevention, advice and treatment of psychological, behavioral and relational phenomena that affect the legal behavior of people. To do this, use the methods of scientific psychology .
Legal psychology is, in short, an area of work whose object of study is the behavior of legal actors in the field of law , law and justice . It is a discipline recognized by associations and organizations around the world.
Hence, within legal psychology, we proceed to analyze, intervene and study what victimology, penitentiary psychology, the psychology of crime, police psychology and mediation are. All of this without forgetting that he also works in areas such as child psychology, family and civil, criminal and labor law.
Legal psychology uses methods from scientific psychology.
Functions of experts in this area
Among the functions of the legal psychologist are the evaluation and diagnosis of the psychological conditions of legal actors; advising judicial bodies on issues within their discipline; the design and implementation of programs for the prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and integration of legal actors in the community or the penitentiary environment; the training of professionals in the legal system in psychological content and techniques useful in their work; social prevention campaigns against crime; and assistance to victims to improve their quality of life.
It should be noted that legal psychology has various areas of application. Applied to criminal law , it is responsible, for example, for issuing reports for judges and courts of defendants and victims. As penitentiary psychology , it studies the personality of inmates according to psychological methods and evaluating their temperamental traits. In mediation tasks , on the other hand, it is dedicated to preparing an appropriate context so that the parties can communicate and have a greater chance of reaching an agreement.
In the case of Spain we can say that there is what is known as the Spanish Society of Legal and Forensic Psychology . An organization that was created in 2006 and whose objectives are basically to encourage and promote scientific research in the field of the aforementioned psychology.