Forensic psychology is a rather young specialization within the area of professional psychology. Most of the prolific authors in this area of psychology are still living and still publishing. If you are looking for some book recommendations as an undergraduate student aspiring to become a forensic psychologist one day, then we would like to direct your attention to the best practices series produced by Oxford University Press in the area of forensic mental health assessment. These books are concise, typically short and have various charts and bullet points of information that help readers to quickly digest them. Some forensic psychology books are extremely long and dense like those thick reference books you see within the bookcases of various lawyers. Those are not the books for undergraduate students interested in this career. However, the Oxford University Press series on forensic mental health could be for you.

This series was edited by Kirk Heilbrun, Tom Grisso and Alan Goldstein. They have all published some of those rather thick books mentioned above but really produced something good for us with this book series amounting to about 19 books in total. This series is organized into three sections based on criminal, civil, and family law. The authors of each book are well known within their subspecialty, whether it is an evaluation of competence to stand trial, evaluation of sexually violent predators, guardianship disability, parenting capacity, etc.

By checking out these books, you may get a sense of what jobs in the field of forensic psychology would be best-suited for you. However, most importantly you will see the similarities that cut across these unique jobs in terms of what forensic psychologists are actually doing on a day-to-day basis. Also, these books are relatively inexpensive and are frequently available via Kindle and other e-reader devices.

If you happened to stumble across this site as a psychologist looking for information on how to specialize in forensic psychology, then we suggest for you to check out Eric Mart’s book titled Getting Started in Forensic Psychology Practice. However, as undergraduates, this is not the book for us and frankly the book for us may be limited to whatever is available in our University’s library. My University happens to carry the first book in the Oxford University Press Series on forensic psychology and we hope your library does as well.

If you are interested in some serious in-depth reading concerning the field of forensic psychology, then you might want to look towards the American Board of the Professional Psychology’s recommended reading list for preparation to complete the written examination for Board Certification.  Many of the Oxford University Press books are included within this reading list as well as several other very important texts within the field of forensic psychology. Happy reading. Any questions?