Monday, November 29, 2004

Shrinks trying to be judge and jury

I just learned that psychologists doing custody evaluations commonly revisit past criminal accusations, and come to their own conclusions that might be different from the justice system's.

That is, a father might have been arrested for domestic violence or drunk driving or something else, get his day in court, get acquitted, and still have some custody evaluator later decide that he was really guilty. The evaluator will do his own review of the evidence, and use his finding to exact some sort of punishment against the father.

So evaluators are not only acting as judge and jury, they sometimes use their power to override what the judge and jury has already determined.

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