Criminal Law

Full course description

Since forensic psychology is the application of the science and profession of psychology to questions and issues relating to criminal law and the criminal justice system, it stands to reason that a course in criminal law forms a substantial part of this Master program. The content of this course is therefore largely based on the idea that students in forensic psychology must have a general as well as a forensic specific knowledge of the principles and concepts of criminal law.

The main purpose of this course is to examine on an introductory level some basic principles and concepts of law in general and criminal law in particular. The course focuses primarily on criminal law; criminal procedure, substantive criminal law and criminal sanctions.

The course has two objectives. The first, more general, objective is to introduce psychology students to the basics of (criminal) law by examining its elementary concepts. But, since this course forms a substantial part of the Master Forensic Psychology, it also has a second, more specific, objective namely to create a better understanding of those criminal law topics that are especially interesting from a forensic psychological perspective. This means that a selection has been made of topics that are of particular interest for (future) forensic psychologists, e.g. the jurisprudential status of an insanity defence, the legal position of expert witnesses in criminal procedure, the human rights of mentally disturbed offenders as well as some basic aspects of international criminal law.

This twofold approach - a global overview combined with a forensic-psychological focus - also allows students to examine similarities and differences between psychological and legal views on crime related issues.

The final assessment for this course is a numerical grade between 0,0 and 10,0.