Register open for applications Legal Psychology

According to the Register of Court Experts in Criminal Cases Decree (Besluit register deskundige in strafzaken), the Board of the Netherlands Register of Court Experts has the task of specifying requirements for each field of expertise.

On the basis of the advice by the Advisory Committee for Standards for Legal Psychology, the Board has set the standards for this field of expertise: Standards and assessment procedure Legal Psychology. This document contains the demarcation, registration requirements and the assessment procedure.

The NRGD distinguishes the following subfields within the field of Legal Psychology:
009.1 Legal Psychology – Statement Validity;
009.2 Legal Psychology – Deception Detection;
009.3 Legal Psychology – Psychology of Evidence.

The Advisory Committee for Standards consisted of:

Mrs R. Dumas PhD (BE)
Mr R. Horselenberg PhD (NL)
Professor J. de Keijser (NL)
Professor H. Merckelbach (NL)
Mrs P. Poppe LL.M. (NL)
Professor E. Rassin (NL)
Mr P. Santtila Phd (FIN)
Mrs J. van der Sleen MSc (NL)
Mrs A. Vredeveldt PhD (NL)

As a registered expert you are assessed carefully by an independent expert committee and therefore have a public and legal acknowledgement of your forensic expertise. The ‘Experts in Criminal Cases Act’ came into effect on 1 January 2010. Since then, commissioning parties (courts, prosecution) have had the legal obligation to provide reasons in case they appoint an expert who is not registered. The commissioning parties  can use the register to quickly check whether an expert is qualified.

3.1  Application

The following documents are important for your application:

• Standards Legal Psychology
• List of case information Legal Psychology
• Checklist Application Package Legal Psychology
• Overview Continued Professional Development
• Certificate of Good Conduct (for Dutch applicants)

These documents will be published at the website of the NRGD under Registration as soon as possible.

3.2  Correspondence

The NRGD will correspond with you by e-mail in Dutch or English. Please send your application to beheer@nrgd.nl attaching all the documents separately to your e-mail.

Although we understand that it would be reassuring for you to know how long the registration procedure will take in total, this is difficult to say because the received applications will be assessed in clusters. For the first round of assessments, we would like to receive your initial applications before the 19th of June 2017.

The NRGD strives to process the registration procedure as swiftly as possible. If you have any questions about the procedure you are welcome to contact one of our colleagues at the NRGD (beheer@nrgd.nl).