Working in Forensic Services in a Person-centered Way

In this article, I describe how I attempted to work in a person-centered way in a forensic setting as a Clinical Psychologist in the UK. For five years I worked within a National Health Service mental health trust in the forensic services section. The three main clinical activities in my job were: clinical assessment, risk assessment and therapy. My greatest challenge was managing the ethical compromises I had to make, with little support, in order to try and help my clients within a fundamentally disempowering system. In this paper I reflect on these compromises and how far it is possible to work from a personcentered, theoretical and ethical framework within a forensic system.