Psychology and law: a science to be applied

'Psychology and Law' has seen a major growth over since the 1960s. Many books have been published. These include conclusions of major research studies into issues of relevance both to psychology and law, such as the prediction of violence from people with a mental disorder (e.g. Monahan et al. , 2001). They also include reviews of topics that have been widely researched for many years, such as identification evidence (e.g. Wells, 2002) and jury decision making (e.g. Greene et al. , 2002); topics that have become associated with relatively few researchers, such as confession evidence (e.g. Gudjonsson, 2003); and emerging topics, such as impulsivity (e.g. Webster and Jackson, 1997), offenders' reasoning (e.g. McMurran, 2002; Palmer, 2003), or failure to reason before acting (e.g. Libet, Freeman and Sutherland, 1999) where the implications, for law and practice are still emerging. There are reviews of the field (e.g. Kapardis, 2003), collected works covering a broad range of topics (e.g. Kagehiro and Laufer, 1992), and collections on specific topics, such as interviewing (e.g. Memon and Bull, 1999).