by Alex B. Caldwell, Ph.D.
The revelation of numerous police officer involved shootings have focused a spotlight on the need for stricter background investigations of police candidates, as well as a renewed scrutiny of their pre-hire psychological screening. Psychological evaluation not only reveals diagnosable mental disorders, but also can flag those recruits whose personality types and behaviors are unsuited to police work where judgment and emotional stability are crucial, especially in situations involving high stress and/or high risk.
Because there is currently no national standard for how police recruits are psychologically evaluated, police departments are often dependent on the expertise and experience of a police psychologist. However, state statutes do not explicitly require a licensed psychologist administer an evaluation. Even when mandated, evaluations may be inconsistently administered. Tests and methods used by examiners, as well as the qualifications of the examiners themselves, vary widely. Some departments forgo formal testing altogether. Yet we know there is a direct correlation, as cited by Flint Taylor, of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, between a lack of screening and those cases litigated involving police brutality.
When you use the Caldwell Report Personnel Evaluation Form, which was normed on police applicants and is imbued with the refined and complex interpretation of Alex B Caldwell, Ph.D., the world’s leading expert on the MMPI-2, your police evaluation process will benefit from Dr.Caldwell’s vast experience and expertise. This Personnel Evaluation Form is used for the screening of high risk employment and related selections of special sensitivity and/or consequences for the public. It is also used for return-to-work evaluations.
Eliminate the risk of a “bad hire”, which, as we have recently been made so painfully aware, can result in trauma to individuals, families and the public, as well as devastating legal and criminal repercussions for your department.
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<h2>Adaptational Etiologies</h2>
The reports from Caldwell Report now contain new, unique, and we believe revolutionary hypotheses as to the developmental origins of the patterns of psychopathology that are identified by the MMPI-2. These are emotionally shaping traumas and developmental experiences including rearing attitudes, histories and types of abuse, personal tragedies, more recent adult traumatic experiences and onsets, and for some patterns potential biologic dispositions that can make a person more vulnerable to the particular MMPI-2 codetype outcomes. The qualities of the attachments they form are considered in detail. As is explained in the website material, this is based in part on Dr. Caldwell’s belief that <em>all behavior is survival adaptive</em> when we sufficiently understand the individual in his or her experiential and constitutional contexts.
These developmental supplements are now included in about three-fourths of the narrative reports that we prepare; some code types occur so infrequently that sufficient etiologic data is not presently available. Some profiles, of course, have a single pair of scales that are distinctly the most elevated. Other profiles may have four, five, or six scales nearly equally elevated. These latter typically are clinically mixed cases with behavioral suggestions of several varied diagnoses. In the simple profiles, the etiologic and developmental information is expected to be a relatively good fit, sometimes even a bit uncanny. But the profiles with several scales nearly at the same elevations often have complex and mixed histories with diverse traumas if not many different painful and aversive experiences. In these cases the etiologic data is expected to fit only a part of the emotional history, a salient part but incomplete in the areas reflected in the secondary scales.
In <em><u>forensic</u></em> applications the etiologic Supplement has at times proven problematic. The developmental material – that can be so productive and save so much time in psychotherapy – is tangential to the determinations to be made by the trial court. The Supplement has in-depth information that in most cases could only be confirmed or disconfirmed in extended and intensive treatment sessions; we would almost never expect it to be covered within the time frame and focus of a forensic examination. Clients have alerted us to instances in forensic cases where cross-examining attorneys have taken to asking questions about the Adaptation Supplement. Their effort is to obscure the prior direct testimony with unanswerable questions, as if to suggest that the examiner’s work was incomplete or deficient. One colleague said his response is, “If you want to know about that material, you should call Dr. Caldwell as a Witness.”
Therefore, this Adaptation Supplement is <em><u>explicitly optional</u></em>. It will normally be included in each report we send out where such information has been identified for the obtained pattern type. However, you un-select this option and we will not in clude it in the report.
If there are any additional ways we can help you, please let us know.