Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

No psychologist likes working in a prison since even those with supportive congenial colleagues contain difficult characteristics: being unable to keep a personal phone within the institution, and having to exit multiple locked gates before rejoining the normal world. Yet these psychologists play a critical role.
While a county chief psychologist I often evaluated inmates at the local jail. An experience which, perhaps contrary to popular belief, they valued and even enjoyed. An inmate's life in a local jail lacks the treatment and educational facilities of larger state prisons. Thus receiving the undivided attention of another person is a gift not to be spurned. Moreover comprehensive psychological testing, which includes intelligence and personality instruments, is inherently interesting and provides exhaustive information. So much that my reports were nicknamed "magic" though their creation reflected the lengthy psychometric research and study of others.
By helping judges make better informed decisions, my reports always aided these. One young man who violated parole was released when my testing revealed that he was intellectually limited. Another, handsome and charming except when pressed, had much unconscious rage toward women which had already erupted in attempted rape.
Society would be safer and more just if psychological testing played a greater role in the judicial system.