Renowned psychologist to address school violence issues with Carson City juvenile officers

A nationally recognized clinical and forensic psychologist whose work has focused on, among other things, violence risk assessment and management among at risk youth will address juvenile and youth service officers in Carson City this Thursday and Friday.

Carson City Juvenile Services, with the help of Ian Curley, welcomes Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD to Carson City for a series of workshops to discuss the importance of positive youth development as it relates to community safety.

As the number of school shootings continues to climb nationwide, Carson City Juvenile Services is looking at ways to focus, identify, assess and appropriately intervene with at-risk youth, said Ali Banister, Carson City's Chief Juvenile Probation Officer.

"Carson City Juvenile Services wants to be pro-active to assure community safety and the best interest of juveniles in the juvenile justice system," said Banister. "Robert Kinscherff has more than 30 years experience in child protection, juvenile justice, forensic mental health and juvenile court systems."

On Thursday Kinscherff will be at the Carson City Capitol Building where he will present to professionals in the field of juvenile and youth services widely recognized methods to identify, assess and intervene with dangerous youth.

Then on Friday, Kinscherff will be at the Carson City Sheriff’s Office presenting a workshop to juvenile probation officers that focuses on court-involved youth and the community.

In addition, he will meet with judges and attorneys to discuss adolescent neurodevelopment, culpability and inadvertent consequences.

Carson City Juvenile Services is excited to have Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD, sharing his experience and knowledge with the professionals in the community, said Banister.

Kinscherff was a Senior Fellow in Law and Neuroscience at the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard University.

Dr. Kinscherff is a forensic and clinical psychologist and an attorney who has been on the faculty at William James College since 1999, where he is Associate Vice President for Community Engagement with oversight of key clinical service-providing programs.

He is also the colleges's teaching faculty member in the Doctoral Clinical Psychology Program and for the Doctoral School Psychology Program, a faculty member at William James College's Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, and Senior Associate for the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. He is a member of the Massachusetts Legislative Special Commission on Sexual Offender Recidivism and designee member for the Administrative Office of the Juvenile Court for the legislative Committee to Develop an Evaluation Process in Cases of Homicide by Juveniles.

Kinscherff has previously served as Assistant Commissioner for Forensic Mental Health (MA Department of Mental Health), Director of Juvenile Court Clinic Services (MA Trial Court), and Director of Adult Forensic Services (Psychiatry and Law Program, MGH). For over a decade, he taught classes at the intersection of law and psychology at Boston University Law School.

For the American Psychological Association, he is a current member of the Board of Professional Affairs, and has served as Chair of the APA Gun Violence Policy Review Task Force, a past two-term Chair of the Ethics Committee (EC), Chair of the Committee on Legal Issues (COLI) and Member of the Committee on Professional Practices and Standards.

His research and professional practice areas include legal, ethical, and professional practice issues in clinical and forensic mental health practice, violence risk assessment and management, juvenile homicide, aggressive and sexually problematic behaviors among youth and adults with developmental or mental disorders, and severe and unusual forms of child maltreatment.

His many publications include the co-authored book APA Ethics Code: Commentary and Case Illustrations (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press, 2009) and more recent publications on topics including mental health practice in juvenile justice contexts, special ethical and practice considerations in work with juvenile and violent offenders, and international human rights law implications for forensic psychologists of the 2012 US Supreme Court case of Miller v. Alabama regarding mandatory life imprisonment without possibility of parole for offenses committed as a juvenile.