The potential for bias in forensic evaluation is well-established. While both implicit and explicit biases exist for all forensic evaluators, civil and criminal proceedings that include neuropsychological expertise are especially prone to allegations of bias – particularly around issues of payment for services and the retention of hand-picked experts by adversarial legal teams. However, few evaluators track their own potentials for bias, rarely establishing individual base rates for forensic opinions regarding variables susceptible to bias. In response to this, some evaluators began tracking and discussing their own potential for bias through the use of customized evaluation databases. Both have encouraged mental health professionals to examine data from their own forensic evaluations and to look for intrinsic biases that may contribute to systematic bias in the US criminal justice system. In this session, we will discuss strategies to identify potential areas for bias in forensic evaluations, with particular attention paid to neuropsychological settings. We will then explore current data on strategies employed to mitigate against potential bias, again focusing on neuropsychological settings, and we will discuss what evidence exists to support particular strategies.
Learning Objectives:
Identify three areas for potential bias in forensic evaluations
Recognize two specific threats to objectivity in neuropsychological settings
Articulate three strategies to mitigate against threats to bias in forensic evaluations
