Correctional psychology

Correctional psychology is an area of psychology that focuses on applying psychology to a correctional setting. According to researcher Michael Decaire, "The correctional psychologist's primary mission is to assist in offender rehabilitation and reintegration." Other duties include promoting a healthy institutional environment to improve staff and inmate safety, delivering direct psychological services to inmates, conducting evaluations of the prison population, contributing to inmate management, and providing release evaluation and recommendations. While correctional has become a highly popular sub-discipline of psychology, it is also riddled with unique ethical dilemmas and conflicts. Unfortunately, many of the ethical dilemmas within correctional psychology appear to be far from successful resolution. There is virtually no recent academic literature concerning the ethical problems in corrections, and even fewer recommendations on how one should proceed when faced with such problems (Weinberger & Sreenivasan, 1994). The ethical guidelines that govern psychological practice are equally unhelpful.