Legal Psychology
The UTEP Legal Psychology Ph.D. Program includes clinical, cognitive, developmental, and social psychologists who conduct basic research with an emphasis towards application to the legal system. Students in our program are trained in both basic and applied experimental methodologies, and those completing the program have been successfully employed in academic, research, government, and private sector positions. Faculty members in the program maintain a variety of basic and applied research interests, including:
- mental health and the criminal justice system
- offender change and desistance
- juvenile risk taking and criminal behavior
- human and physiological approaches to credibility assessment
- forensic interviewing of children and adults
- interrogations and investigative interviewing in criminal justice and national security settings
- psychology of terrorism and prejudice/racial bias
Faculty and graduate students in the program have a consistent record of publication and grant-funding that stem from this research, including support from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, National Institute of Corrections, and various state and national foundations.
Explore our Website
- Learn more about the People in our program, including faculty, current graduate students, and alumni.
- See our Laboratories & Research Infrastructure and learn about the research conducted in our program.
- Learn more about the Legal Psychology Curriculum.
- Prospective graduate students should read our Application Information. Those interested in our program are encouraged to contact faculty regarding research interests and/or any questions related to the application process.
- View the UTEP Department of Psychology homepage to learn more about our faculty and other graduate programs.
About Us
Our Legal Psychology program began with a traditional focus on issues surrounding jury decision-making, eyewitness testimony, and interrogations. In recent years, the focus of our program has shifted to become more offender oriented. Although we still study traditional issues surrounding Legal Psychology, our more recent emphasis has been on assessing, managing, and rehabilitating offenders. Our program provides unique opportunities for research and scholarship at the nexus between several sub-fields of psychology (e.g., like clinical, developmental, and social/personality) and criminology, corrections, and the law.
We welcome students and collaborators who are interested in not only traditional areas of legal psychology scholarship (such as child suggestibility and terrorist interrogation), but those who may be seeking emerging research areas in the field, such as: mental health and the law, offender rehabilitation, offender risk assessment, effective probation practices, criminal identity, race/ethnicity issues in the law, white collar crime, and offender personality.
Contact Us
Our faculty and doctoral students' email addresses may be found by navigating their pages.
