Forensic Psychology at Melbourne

Career pathways for Forensic Psychology

What is Forensic Psychology?

Forensic psychology is one of the fastest growing areas within psychology and the number of postgraduate courses are increasing here in Australia and internationally. Forensic psychology is an integration of the legal system and psychology and traditionally it is divided into a few discrete but related areas

Forensic psychologists in general provide services that are both clinical and forensic in nature. The more clinical aspects of forensic psychology deal with areas such as psychological assessment of offenders, prediction and reduction of future dangerousness, interventions designed to rehabilitate criminal offenders and working with the police and victims. Other parts of forensic psychology are more experimental and are most often based in the social, personality, cognitive, or developmental areas of psychology such as jury decision making, eyewitness identification, the impact of expert witnesses, and the role of children in the courtroom. Another area examines the impact of court decisions, legislative action, and policy issues.

In civil law, psychologists are usually involved in civil litigation cases in which a plaintiff brings forward a suit because they believe someone else has physically or emotionally injured them. Forensic psychologists assess plaintiffs at the request of barristers and provide reports in a variety of different suits such as personal injury suits, sexual harassment cases, civil commitment proceedings, child custody disputes, or workers’ compensation cases.

Forensic psychologists also provide testimony as expert witnesses in cases as diverse as psychological syndromes, such as battered wives syndrome, to eyewitness testimony. They typically become involved in cases that can include competence to stand trial, criminal responsibility, assessing risk and dangerousness, post-accident impairment, capacity to work, degree of mental retardation, trauma suffered by victims of crime, behaviour of victims, the insanity defence, operation of memory, trademark infringement and fraudulent advertising, causation of death as a result of mental state, custodial and access arrangement and effects of discrimination.

Many forensic psychologists work as prison psychologists and specialize in individual and group therapy to rehabilitate offenders. Also, a great deal of their work is with offenders who may present with a variety of mental illnesses and mental health issues within the context of the criminal or civil arenas of the law. Others work in specialized forensic institutions with mentally disordered offenders.

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Forensic Psychology at the University of Melbourne

Here at the University of Melbourne we specialize in adult offenders and correctional psychology and run coursework subjects taught by leading experts in forensic psychology in our Master of Criminology (Forensic Psychology) course. Our postgraduate students receive a solid grounding in legal aspects of forensic psychology and instruction on how to function in a court room. We also teach our students clinical skills to deal with mental disorders and offer courses on specialized groups of offenders such as children, intellectually disabled offenders and sex offenders.

The Master of Criminology (Forensic Psychology) degree targets psychologists and other professionals who are working in the area of forensic psychology and want to upgrade their qualifications, or teaches skills to help interested professionals move into the area of forensic psychology. We believe we offer our students more comprehensive training than other universities. By the time our students graduate they can complete forensic evaluations using their forensic clinical training, they have excellent assessment and therapeutic skills and experience in completing psychological evaluations in a legal setting.

We also believe that our students are better placed to deal with current issues in correctional psychology today. For example, there is an enormous focus by the Victorian Government and the Department of Justice on the rehabilitation of offenders. Corrections Victoria which is part of the Department of Justice has a mandate to reduce recidivism rates within the next five years. In response to that mandate forensic psychologists, especially those working in prisons and in community corrections are involved in providing therapeutic services to offenders. Within forensic psychology research informs us that if we’re to target recidivism effectively offenders we have to target high-risk offenders and ensure that they receive intensive group therapy in programs that run for at least 20 sessions.

More offenders are given the opportunity to engage in therapeutic programs during their incarceration. The main focus of these programs is to target drug and alcohol abuse, reduce violent offending, and suicide and self-harm, and to teach offenders life skills so they can function better once they are released into the community.

In Victoria, another high-risk group, sex offenders, receive court ordered mandatory sex offender treatment before they are released or while they are maintained in the community. There’s also a growing recognition that specific groups of offenders need to be targeted with programs and resources. In Victoria, Corrections Victoria is also currently focusing on Indigenous Offenders and Female Offenders. There’s also a growing need for services to be made available to Intellectually Disabled Offenders who form a substantial part of our prison populations – these offenders are often undiagnosed and are lost within the system, yet they can be high-risk to the community.

Prospective students are advised that the Master of Criminology (Forensic Psychology) degree will not have an intake in 2007. Students may still take Forenisc Psychology subjects through the Master of Criminology or through CAP, subject to approval of the Forensic Psychology convenor.

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How Do I Develop a career in Forensic Psychology?

To become a forensic psychologist you need to enrol in a 3-year undergraduate degree in psychology and then go on to do a fourth year in psychology at the Graduate Diploma or Honours level. At undergraduate level you would be advised to do a double major in psychology and criminology to give you a good grounding in the two topics that come together in forensic psychology. Once you've obtained your Honours you can then apply to do a Masters or Doctoral degree that specialises in forensic psychology. To ensure that you are eligible to enrol in a Masters or Doctoral degree, the majority of universities expect you to obtain an Honours grade, but may consider your application if you have obtained a high quality Graduate Diploma in Psychology.  You must make sure that the postgraduate course is an accredited course with the Australian Psychological Society.  

An alternative way to pursue a career in forensic psychology is to do a Masters or Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and then go on to do additional training in forensic psychology.  The Master of Criminology (Forensic Psychology) at Melbourne is designed to appeal to psychologists who are either working in the area of forensic psychology and want to upgrade their degrees, or want to move into the area and seek some specialised training. 

This may sound like an enormous amount of studying ahead of you but forensic psychology is a very rewarding field to work in and will open many doors of opportunity, here in Australia and Internationally.

• For more information, see the “How to Start a Career in Forensic Psychology” chart at the bottom of this page.

Please note there is no intake for the Doctor of Psychology (Forensic) or the Master of Criminology (Forensic Psychology) in 2007.

• Forensic Psychology Teaching Staff Profiles