Mental Health, Law, and Policy Institute

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Currently the field of psychology and law has a large body of evidence to support those interested in making informed decisions about the legal system and those involved in the legal system, but no comprehensive central repository of this evidence exists.

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This site is intended to reflect a comprehensive, continuously updated, freely available database of top quality scientific papers about psychology and law for policy makers, stakeholders, the general public, practitioners, and researchers.

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This database was developed to increase access to psychology-law evidence and save knowledge seekers time and money in obtaining the best available research evidence on topics in psychology and law (e.g., forensic assessment, juries, eyewitnesses, law and policy analysis, legal decision making, sentencing, victims).

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Each month a systematic and standardized review of the literature is conducted to collect evidence published internationally by MHLPI and CONCEPT research assistants. Evidence includes published systematic reviews, economic evaluations or costing studies, evidence briefs for policy makers, evidence briefs for court, and government organization documents. The methodology used is comprehensive, transparent, and replicable. At this time, the included evidence is in English only due to resource constraints. Each piece of evidence (or source) is reviewed by one of our expert reviewers and one of the PLED database coordinators prior to inclusion in the database. 

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The Psychology Law Evidence Database (PLED) was developed and is maintained by three coordinators: Dr. Alana N. Cook, Dr. Ron Roesch, and Dr. Patricia Zapf. Our partners in maintaining the PLED are the Mental Health, Law, and Policy Institute (MHLPI) at Simon Fraser University, Consolidated Continuing Education & Professional Training(CONCEPT), and Palo Alto University. 

 

The development of the PLED was supported by a Law for the Future Fund Grant from the Canadian Bar Association. We receiving funding for operational support from the Div. 41 of APA, the American Psychology Law Society. We also have a large amount of support from student and professional volunteers who conduct the database searches and reviews across the globe.