Forensic psychologists perform numerous roles within the territory of criminal justice and the law; during consultation, these psychologists often rely on the crucial tool of drawing inferences in order to assist the legal system. Inferences are simply conclusions formulated through deductive and educated reasoning based off of evidence, meaning that these conclusions are tentative rather than definite. In the application of psychological knowledge to the territory of the legal system, drawing inferences as the consulted expertise is confined to a psychologist’s role as an advisor. Psychologists consulted for the processes of psychological profiling, …show more content…
According to Costanzo and Krauss (2015) psychologists advising law enforcement in the position of psychological profilers attempt to create tentative descriptions of unknown suspects, including information pertaining to that individual’s behavior and personality as well as geographical living location (p. 94). In the role of creating psychological autopsies, experts attempt to reconstruct a possible suicide victim’s state of mind before their death in order to determine the nature of that individual’s death and the forces that brought about their decease (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p.110). Jury consultants are psychologists that are hired to advise either the defense or the prosecution on which potential jurors would be most sympathetic to their client or case; they assist lawyers to create a jury that would be most probable to favor their side of the case (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. …show more content…
Psychological profilers evaluate the condition of the crime scene, aspects of the crime, the Modus Operandi, the Signature, police reports, and the circumstantial evidence and from this pool of information draw inferences to create a profile on the unknown suspect (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. 94). In the process of creating psychological autopsies, experts dissect the life of the possible suicide victim, looking at a pool of information ranging from biographical information—age, marital status, occupation status— to personal information—lifestyle, alcohol or drug use, addiction history, medical history, suicidal tendencies, psychiatric history— to finally any secondary information—police records, dairies, books (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. 111). In the case of the process of jury selection, consulting psychologists draw inferences on the biases, prejudices, and beliefs of the potential jurors from the information pool collected in the voir dire process, the various questionnaires filled out by the potential jurors and any interviews during this process (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p.