Forensic Psychology Reconsidered: A Critique of Mental Illness and the Courts

David Polizzi, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Indiana State University and a licensed clinical addiction counselor. He is the co-editor of Transforming Corrections: Humanistic Approaches to Corrections and Offender Treatment and Surviving your Clinical Placement: Reflections, Suggestions and Unsolicited Advice, and the editor of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, an e-publication focused on alternative theoretical and methodological perspectives related to criminology, criminal justice, and offender treatment. He has also published numerous book chapters and journal articles related to the phenomenology of strain, deviance, restorative justice, desistance, suicide by cop, addiction, and the phenomenology of the "criminal body," as well as a variety of articles related to the theory and practice of offender treatment. Prior to joining the faculty at Indiana State University, he worked as a forensic psychotherapist with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and in a variety of community mental health settings. He has worked clinically with offender populations for nearly twenty years and has used that experience in his integration of theory and practice both in his published writing as well as his work in the classroom. Matthew R. Draper, PhD, is Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Utah Valley University. Before working at Utah Valley, he served as the Director of Clinical Training and the Mental Health Counseling Program Director at Indiana State University. His teaching specialization is in the areas of psychotherapy theory and practice, the history of psychotherapy, and philosophy of the behavioral sciences. Draper's research and scholarship focuses on the philosophy and practice of psychotherapy, particularly the moral philosophy of forensic psychotherapy, from a broadly hermeneutic and dialogic frame. He also examines how these ideas relate to working with marginalized and underserved groups like the currently and formerly incarcerated.