Book Review: Challenging bias in forensic psychological assessment and testing. Theoretical and practical approaches to working with diverse populations
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20662203231180007 |
| Author | Martine Herzog-Evans |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Review
European Journal of Probation
2023, Vol. 15(2) 165–170
© The Author(s) 2023
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sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/20662203231180007
journals.sagepub.com/home/ejp
Book Review
Glenda C Liell, Martin J Fisher and Lawrence F Jones (eds). Challenging bias in forensic psychological
assessment and testing. Theoretical and practical approaches to working with diverse populations.
Abingdon: Routledge. 2023. 509 p. ISBN: 978-1-032-13828-2.
Reviewed by: Martine Herzog-Evans, PHD, Universit´
e de Reims-Champagne Ardenne
As Shadd Maruna aptly says in his foreword, forensic assessors have enormous power and
as such ‘are obliged to scrutinise (their) own biases’(p. xxiii). In their preface, the three
editors explain that this collection of no less than 27 chapters, including an introduction
and a conclusion, was inspired by the death of George Floyd and the issue of dis-
crimination. Starting, therefore, with diversity of colour in mind it then morphed more
widely into ‘the diversity of diversity’. The three editors are UK forensic psychologists
working with the NHS or in the criminal justice system. In their rich introductory Chapter
1, they explain that they want to address three types of biases: those arising bec ause of the
way assessment is performed; those arising from professionals themselves; and those
arising from working with diverse populations. This constitutes the structure of their
book, which thus comprises three parts.
The first part includes chapters pertaining to the utilisation of smartphones in forensic
assessment and measure, cultural awareness and, conversely, cultural and social biases, in
assessment. Salves against the risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) model and questions
pertaining to what is exactly measured are classic in forensic psychology. Heffernan and
Ward (Chapter 3), for instance, in presenting their new model, accuse RNR of being in
essence a crude assessment model, where dynamic risk factors (DRFs) are understood as
mere ‘red flags which signal the presence of problems’(p. 41). As has now become
habitual in the good life model (GLM tradition), Heffernan and Ward criticise the very
nature of DRFs and their theoretical-empirical basis in a way which the reader, par-
ticularly practitioners, might find too intricate. What is quite right and more obvious, is
that RNR assessment is indeed basic in nature, but does not offer the level of breadth
necessary to deal with a given individual –and Heffernan and Ward are more specificin
Chapter 4, written with Schmidt, on this particular issue.
It is important to remember that ‘breadth’is one of Bonta and Andrews’s overreaching
principles (Bonta and Andrews, 2017). What Heffernan and Ward recommend is case
formulation, performed according to the Cognitive-Behavioural tradition, following
functional analysis (Owen and Ashcroft, 1982), or ‘offence paralleling behaviour’
(Daffern et al., 2010). These models, however, do present serious risks of bias themselves.
The classic conundrum, which is not sufficiently addressed in the literature –because it
tends to be divided into supporters and opponents –is that, on the one hand, structuring
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