The British Psychological Society (BPS) have published 'Ethical guidelines for applied psychological practice in the field of extremism, violent extremism and terrorism' on their website.
In October 2017, two American plaintiffs were granted damages in an out of court settlement against two contract psychologists for their role in aiding and abetting torture, non-consensual human experimentation and war crimes in a secret CIA facility in Afghanistan. As Garrett Koren, a prison psychiatrist in America pointed out at the time, psychologists have no direct equivalent to the Hippocratic oath for physicians that includes the words: “I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage”, publicly affirming their standards of conduct where human life is concerned.
In the UK this week, The British Psychological Society (BPS) published ‘Ethical guidelines for applied psychological practice in the field of extremism, violent extremism and terrorism’ on their website. These were produced by the Division of Forensic Psychology (DFP) Extremism working party, facilitated by Nicola Bowes and Debbie McQueirns, and authored by Zainab Al-Attar, Jackie Bates-Gaston, Christopher Dean and Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology, Monica Lloyd, all practitioner psychologists with experience of working with perpetrators of violent extremism.
They are structured under the four key ethical principles of the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct, Respect, Responsibility, Competence and Integrity, and cross referenced to the HCPC Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics. With the Government Prevent Duty 2016 incumbent on us all, and not without its critics, these professional guidelines are welcome for all practising psychologists.
