Forensic Psychologists as Police Critical Incident Negotiation Advisors

Authors

  • Michael Lewis
  • Carol A. Ireland

Keywords:

Forensic psychologist, Advisor, Critical incident, Crisis negotiation, Conflict negotiation, Policing

Abstract

Negotiation teams are well established within tactical policing. Police agencies select and train personnel they deem suitable to act as negotiators during critical incidents. Consultants, such as forensic psychologists, have been considered as a means of increasing success during critical incidents through the specialist advice they are able to provide. However, there remains little research on the effectiveness of the advisor role and whether it is perceived by policing colleagues to be of benefit to the negotiation process. This will be discussed whilst also considering the consultancy process and how the forensic psychologist’s skill set may benefit negotiation teams. This manuscript will focus predominantly on hostage-taking as an example, as this is where a significant portion of the literature originated.

Author Biographies

  • Michael Lewis

    Michael Lewis, PhD is a Chartered Psychologist, Chartered Scientist and Lecturer in Forensic Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire. He has experience of multi-method working with hard to engage offender groups, including those with raised levels of clinical psychopathy, which is his area of research specialism. Dr Lewis is the lead author on the Psychopathic Processing and Personality Assessment (PAPA) and Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice. He currently works as a core therapist on a long-term violence treatment programme for offenders. He also has a background in policing and is a trained crisis/hostage negotiator (NHS).

  • Carol A. Ireland

    Carol A. Ireland PhD, MBA is a Chartered Psychologist, Consultant Forensic Psychologist and Chartered Scientist. She previously worked in a High Secure Setting for nine years, where she was lead for sex offender therapies and critical incident (hostage) negotiation, and where she acted as an advisor in crisis/conflict situations. Dr. Ireland is also a Senior Research Lead at the Ashworth Research Centre at Ashworth Hospital. She also works at CCATS (www.ccats.org.uk), a child and adult therapeutic service in the community. She has more than 70 publications, including journal articles, books and book chapters, mainly on offending, consultancy and crisis (hostage) negotiation.

References

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Published

2023-02-04

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2019)

Section

Research Articles

License

Authors retain copyright in their articles and grant SALUS the right of first publication. The work is simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and the journal, a link to the license is provided, and any changes made are indicated.

How to Cite

Forensic Psychologists as Police Critical Incident Negotiation Advisors. (2023). Salus Journal, 7(2), 2-19. https://journals.csu.domains/index.php/salusjournal/article/view/100