Being an IDS student means that I have spent a lot of time in many different departments, and through those experiences I have seen just how pertinent each department is to others. From being involved in both psychology and criminology, I’ve really started to realize how intertwined the two subjects are and how relevant they are to each other. Recently, my criminal law class had a lecture dedicated to eyewitness identification, during which we discussed a case in which a woman wrongly identified her rapist despite being 100% certain that she was right. This case brought up a discussion of how trauma affects the brain and how a police station in Massachusetts changed the way they do suspect lineups because of their knowledge on trauma. Being a student who studies both neuropsychology and criminology, this really sparked my interest. I started to look into how police academies train their officers on trauma and realized that there is hardly any training on this subject. After talking to my professor, I began to see just how big how big of a problem this is, and thus my applied project finally began to take shape.
I want to change how we train our law enforcement on mental health, trauma and trauma informed care.
In researching how New Hampshire currently trains their law enforcement, I discovered that New Hampshire really only dedicates one day out of their 16 week training to this topic. With how relevant and necessary trauma informed care is, I think this is really a disservice to both the citizens of NH and to the officers themselves.
Because this is such a big project, I have enlisted the help of my professor, who has very graciously put me in contact with a lot of relevant people. I am hoping with their help and knowledge we will be able to improve the training we give our officers and improve future outcomes of police interactions and involvement in victims’ lives.
For this project, I am planning on posting the research I find on how other states/countries train their officers, the neuroscience behind what victims really need and how that can be improved. I also plan on writing updates on this project and hopefully by the end will have a plan on how to improve our training to be enacted.