ABSTRACT
Forensic mental health practitioners face complex and pressing ethical issues in virtually every aspect of their assessment and therapeutic work with individuals facing trial, awaiting sentence, or serving a sentence within the criminal justice system. One of the major reasons that this type of work is especially ethically challenging is because it involves an interaction between two distinct state institutions, the criminal justice and mental health systems. Each of these institutions has its own set of functions and norms specifying what constitutes acceptable conduct for every role it recognizes and authorizes. The difficulty for forensic mental health practitioners is that they often have a foot in both camps. They are mental health professionals and criminal justice employees and therefore subject to (at least) two sets of norms, loyalties, rules, and laws and are guided by the associated professional ethical codes.
