Advances in forensic assessment and treatment: An overview and introduction to the special issue.

In June 1999, the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS), and arguably the field of psychology and law, marked its 30th anniversary. The impetus for an organization focused on psychology and law came from two psychologists, both of whom were practicing forensic clinicians, one of whom, Jay Ziskin, was dissatisfied with the current status and quality of mental health testimony and consultation to the courts and hoped that the Society would become the organizing force for the development of an applied forensic science. He believed that rigorous applied research might someday provide a type of empirically based psychological testimony that psychiatry was not providing, but which psychology was prepared to develop (Grisso, 1991, p. 217). During the early developmental period of clinical forensic psychology, psychologists primarily used tests, evaluation techniques, and psychotherapeutic strategies that had been developed in general clinical settings and applied them to legally relevant assessments and the treatment of criminal offenders and victims. The result